Read Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James for Free Online Page A

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 ofmelancholy 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, in fine, as a man wrapped up in his books, and it was a matter of great surprise among his neighbors that he should even have heard of his cousin, Stephen Elliot, much more that he should have volunteered to make him an inmate of Aswarby Hall.
    Whatever may have been expected by his neighbors, it is certain that Mr. Abney—the tall, the thin, the austere—seemed inclined to give his young cousin a kindly reception. The moment the front door was opened he darted out of his study, rubbing his hands with delight.
    “How are you, my boy? How are you? How old are you?” said he. “That is, you are not too much tired, I hope, by your journey to eat your supper?”
    “No, thank you, sir,” said Master Elliot; “I am pretty well.”
    “That’s a good lad,” said Mr. Abney. “And how old are you, my boy?”
    It seemed a little odd that he should have asked the question twice in the first two minutes of their acquaintance.
    “I’m twelve years old next birthday, sir,” said Stephen.
    “And when is your birthday, my dear boy? Eleventh of September, eh? That’s well—that’s very well. Nearly a year hence, isn’t it? I like—ha, ha!—I like to get these things down in my book. Sure it’s twelve? Certain?”
    “Yes, quite sure, Sir.”
    “Well, well! Take him to Mrs. Bunch’s room, Parkes, and let him have his tea—supper—whatever it is.”
    “Yes, sir,” answered the staid Mr. Parkes, and conducted Stephen to the lower regions.
    Mrs. Bunch was the most comfortable and human person whom Stephen had as yet met in Aswarby. She made him completely at home: they were great friends in a quarter of an hour, and great friends they remained.
    Mrs. Bunch had been born in the neighborhood some fifty-five years before the date of Stephen’s arrival, and her residence at the Hall was of twenty years standing. Consequently, if anyone knew the ins and outs of the house and the district, Mrs. Bunch knew them; and she was by no means disinclined to communicate her information.
    Certainly there were plenty of things about the Hall and the Hall gardens which Stephen, who was of an adventurous and inquiring turn, was anxious to have explained to him.
    “Who built the temple at the end of the laurel