Ghost Stories of an Antiquary | Page 7

devils to flight, pray for me most unhappy.
I saw it first on the night of Dec. 12, 1694: soon I shall see it for the last
time. I have sinned and suffered, and have more to suffer yet. Dec. 29,
1701.
The 'Gallia Christiana' gives the date of the Canon's death as December
31, 1701, 'in bed, of a sudden seizure'. Details of this kind are not
common in the great work of the Sammarthani.
I have never quite understood what was Dennistoun's view of the
events I have narrated. He quoted to me once a text from Ecclesiasticus:
'Some spirits there be that are created for vengeance, and in their fury
lay on sore strokes.' On another occasion he said: 'Isaiah was a very
sensible man; doesn't he say something about night monsters living in
the ruins of Babylon? These things are rather beyond us at present.'
Another confidence of his impressed me rather, and I sympathized with

it. We had been, last year, to Comminges, to see Canon Alberic's tomb.
It is a great marble erection with an effigy of the Canon in a large wig
and soutane, and an elaborate eulogy of his learning below. I saw
Dennistoun talking for some time with the Vicar of St Bertrand's, and
as we drove away he said to me: 'I hope it isn't wrong: you know I am a
Presbyterian--but I--I believe there will be "saying of Mass and singing
of dirges" for Alberic de Mauléon's rest.' Then he added, with a touch
of the Northern British in his tone, 'I had no notion they came so dear.'
* * * * *
The book is in the Wentworth Collection at Cambridge. The drawing
was photographed and then burnt by Dennistoun on the day when he
left Comminges on the occasion of his first visit.

LOST HEARTS
It was, as far as I can ascertain, in September of the year 1811 that a
post-chaise drew up before the door of Aswarby Hall, in the heart of
Lincolnshire. The little boy who was the only passenger in the chaise,
and who jumped out as soon as it had stopped, looked about him with
the keenest curiosity during the short interval that elapsed between the
ringing of the bell and the opening of the hall door. He saw a tall,
square, red-brick house, built in the reign of Anne; a stone-pillared
porch had been added in the purer classical style of 1790; the windows
of the house were many, tall and narrow, with small panes and thick
white woodwork. A pediment, pierced with a round window, crowned
the front. There were wings to right and left, connected by curious
glazed galleries, supported by colonnades, with the central block. These
wings plainly contained the stables and offices of the house. Each was
surmounted by an ornamental cupola with a gilded vane.
An evening light shone on the building, making the window-panes
glow like so many fires. Away from the Hall in front stretched a flat
park studded with oaks and fringed with firs, which stood out against
the sky. The clock in the church-tower, buried in trees on the edge of

the park, only its golden weather-cock catching the light, was striking
six, and the sound came gently beating down the wind. It was
altogether a pleasant impression, though tinged with the sort of
melancholy appropriate to an evening in early autumn, that was
conveyed to the mind of the boy who was standing in the porch waiting
for the door to open to him.
The post-chaise had brought him from Warwickshire, where, some six
months before, he had been left an orphan. Now, owing to the generous
offer of his elderly cousin, Mr Abney, he had come to live at Aswarby.
The offer was unexpected, because all who knew anything of Mr
Abney looked upon him as a somewhat austere recluse, into whose
steady-going household the advent of a small boy would import a new
and, it seemed, incongruous element. The truth is that very little was
known of Mr Abney's pursuits or temper. The Professor of Greek at
Cambridge had been heard to say that no one knew more of the
religious beliefs of the later pagans than did the owner of Aswarby.
Certainly his library contained all the then available books bearing on
the Mysteries, the Orphic poems, the worship of Mithras, and the
Neo-Platonists. In the marble-paved hall stood a fine group of Mithras
slaying a bull, which had been imported from the Levant at great
expense by the owner. He had contributed a description of it to the
Gentleman's Magazine, and he had written a remarkable series of
articles in the Critical Museum on the superstitions of the Romans of
the Lower Empire. He was looked upon,