A Thin Ghost | Page 7

affords us some reflection, pale indeed, but
veritable, of the sweets of polite intercourse: the adjacent country
numbers amid the occupants of its scattered mansions some whose
polish is annually refreshed by contact with metropolitan splendour,
and others whose robust and homely geniality is, at times, and by way
of contrast, not less cheering and acceptable. Tired of the parlours and
drawing-rooms of our friends, we have ready to hand a refuge from the
clash of wits or the small talk of the day amid the solemn beauties of
our venerable minster, whose silvern chimes daily 'knoll us to prayer,'
and in the shady walks of whose tranquil graveyard we muse with
softened heart, and ever and anon with moistened eye, upon the
memorials of the young, the beautiful, the aged, the wise, and the
good."

Here there is an abrupt break both in the writing and the style.
"But my dearest Emily, I can no longer write with the care which you
deserve, and in which we both take pleasure. What I have to tell you is
wholly foreign to what has gone before. This morning my uncle
brought in to breakfast an object which had been found in the garden; it
was a glass or crystal tablet of this shape (a little sketch is given),
which he handed to me, and which, after he left the room, remained on
the table by me. I gazed at it, I know not why, for some minutes, till
called away by the day's duties; and you will smile incredulously when
I say that I seemed to myself to begin to descry reflected in it objects
and scenes which were not in the room where I was. You will not,
however, be surprised that after such an experience I took the first
opportunity to seclude myself in my room with what I now half
believed to be a talisman of mickle might. I was not disappointed. I
assure you, Emily, by that memory which is dearest to both of us, that
what I went through this afternoon transcends the limits of what I had
before deemed credible. In brief, what I saw, seated in my bedroom, in
the broad daylight of summer, and looking into the crystal depth of that
small round tablet, was this. First, a prospect, strange to me, of an
enclosure of rough and hillocky grass, with a grey stone ruin in the
midst, and a wall of rough stones about it. In this stood an old, and very
ugly, woman in a red cloak and ragged skirt, talking to a boy dressed in
the fashion of maybe a hundred years ago. She put something which
glittered into his hand, and he something into hers, which I saw to be
money, for a single coin fell from her trembling hand into the grass.
The scene passed--I should have remarked, by the way, that on the
rough walls of the enclosure I could distinguish bones, and even a skull,
lying in a disorderly fashion. Next, I was looking upon two boys; one
the figure of the former vision, the other younger. They were in a plot
of garden, walled round, and this garden, in spite of the difference in
arrangement, and the small size of the trees, I could clearly recognize
as being that upon which I now look from my window. The boys were
engaged in some curious play, it seemed. Something was smouldering
on the ground. The elder placed his hands upon it, and then raised them
in what I took to be an attitude of prayer: and I saw, and started at
seeing, that on them were deep stains of blood. The sky above was

overcast. The same boy now turned his face towards the wall of the
garden, and beckoned with both his raised hands, and as he did so I was
conscious that some moving objects were becoming visible over the top
of the wall--whether heads or other parts of some animal or human
forms I could not tell. Upon the instant the elder boy turned sharply,
seized the arm of the younger (who all this time had been poring over
what lay on the ground), and both hurried off. I then saw blood upon
the grass, a little pile of bricks, and what I thought were black feathers
scattered about. That scene closed, and the next was so dark that
perhaps the full meaning of it escaped me. But what I seemed to see
was a form, at first crouching low among trees or bushes that were
being threshed by a violent wind, then running very swiftly, and
constantly turning a pale face to look behind him, as if he feared a
pursuer: and, indeed, pursuers were following hard after him. Their
shapes were but dimly