J. S. Le Fanus Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 | Page 6

a little frost by night, down here, sir, and a little fire is no
great harm--it is rather pleasant, don't you think?"
The stranger bowed acquiescence with a transient wintry smile, and
looked gratefully on the fire.
"This place is a good deal admired, sir, and people come a good way to

see it; you have been here perhaps before?"
"Many years ago."
Here was another pause.
"Places change imperceptibly--in detail, at least--a good deal," said the
Doctor, making an effort to keep up a conversation that plainly would
not go on of itself; "and people too; population shifts--there's an old
fellow, sir, they call Death."
"And an old fellow they call the Doctor, that helps him," threw in the
Captain humorously, allowing his attention to get entangled in the
conversation, and treating them to one of his tempestuous ha-ha-ha's.
"We are expecting the return of a gentleman who would be a very
leading member of our little society down here," said the Doctor, not
noticing the Captain's joke. "I mean Sir Bale Mardykes. Mardykes Hall
is a pretty object from the water, sir, and a very fine old place."
The melancholy stranger bowed slightly, but rather in courtesy to the
relator, it seemed, than that the Doctor's lore interested him much.
"And on the opposite side of the lake," continued Doctor Torvey, "there
is a building that contrasts very well with it--the old house of the
Feltrams--quite a ruin now, at the mouth of the glen--Cloostedd House,
a very picturesque object."
"Exactly opposite," said the stranger dreamily, but whether in the tone
of acquiescence or interrogatory, the Doctor could not be quite sure.
"That was one of our great families down here that has disappeared. It
has dwindled down to nothing."
"Duce ace," remarked Mr. Hollar, who was attending to his game.
"While others have mounted more suddenly and amazingly still,"
observed gentle Mr. Peers, who was great upon county genealogies.

"Sizes!" thundered the Captain, thumping the table with an oath of
disgust.
"And Snakes Island is a very pretty object; they say there used to be
snakes there," said the Doctor, enlightening the visitor.
"Ah! that's a mistake," said the dejected guest, making his first original
observation. "It should be spelt Snaiks. In the old papers it is called
Sen-aiks Island from the seven oaks that grew in a clump there."
"Hey? that's very curious, egad! I daresay," said the Doctor, set right
thus by the stranger, and eyeing him curiously.
"Very true, sir," observed Mr. Peers; "three of those oaks, though, two
of them little better than stumps, are there still; and Clewson of
Heckleston has an old document----"
Here, unhappily, the landlord entered the room in a fuss, and walking
up to the stranger, said, "The chaise is at the door, Mr. Feltram, and the
trunks up, sir."
Mr. Feltram rose quietly and took out his purse, and said,
"I suppose I had better pay at the bar?"
"As you like best, sir," said Richard Turnbull.
Mr. Feltram bowed all round to the gentlemen, who smiled, ducked or
waved their hands; and the Doctor fussily followed him to the hall-door,
and welcomed him back to Golden Friars--there was real kindness in
this welcome--and proffered his broad brown hand, which Mr. Feltram
took; and then he plunged into his chaise, and the door being shut,
away he glided, chaise, horses, and driver, like shadows, by the margin
of the moonlighted lake, towards Mardykes Hall.
And after a few minutes' stand upon the steps, looking along the
shadowy track of the chaise, they returned to the glow of the room, in
which a pleasant perfume of punch still prevailed; and beside Mr.

Philip Feltram's deserted tea-things, the host of the George enlightened
his guests by communicating freely the little he had picked up. The
principal fact he had to tell was, that Sir Bale adhered strictly to his
original plan, and was to arrive on the tenth. A few days would bring
them to that, and the nine-days wonder run its course and lose its
interest. But in the meantime, all Golden Friars was anxious to see what
Sir Bale Mardykes was like.

CHAPTER IV
The Baronet Appears
As the candles burn blue and the air smells of brimstone at the
approach of the Evil One, so, in the quiet and healthy air of Golden
Friars, a depressing and agitating influence announced the coming of
the long-absent Baronet.
From abroad, no good whatever had been at any time heard of him, and
a great deal that was, in the ears of simple folk living in that
unsophisticated part of the world, vaguely awful.
Stories that travel so far, however, lose something of their authority, as
well as definiteness, on the way; there was always room for charity to
suggest a