J. S. Le Fanus Ghostly Tales, Volume 5

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J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales,
Volume 5

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Title: J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5
Author: J.S. Le Fanu
Release Date: June 12, 2004 [EBook #12592]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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J.S. LE FANU'S GHOSTLY TALES

BY
J.S. LE FANU
VOLUME 5

CONTENTS
LAURA SILVER BELL (1872)
WICKED CAPTAIN WALSHAWE, OF WAULING (1869)
THE CHILD THAT WENT WITH THE FAIRIES (1870)
STORIES OF LOUGH GUIR (1870) The Magician Earl Moll Rial's
Adventure The Banshee The Governess's Dream The Earl's Hall
THE VISION OF TOM CHUFF (1870)
DICKON THE DEVIL (1872)

LAURA SILVER BELL
In the five Northumbrian counties you will scarcely find so bleak, ugly,
and yet, in a savage way, so picturesque a moor as Dardale Moss. The
moor itself spreads north, south, east, and west, a great undulating sea
of black peat and heath.
What we may term its shores are wooded wildly with birch, hazel, and
dwarf-oak. No towering mountains surround it, but here and there you
have a rocky knoll rising among the trees, and many a wooded
promontory of the same pretty, because utterly wild, forest, running out
into its dark level.
Habitations are thinly scattered in this barren territory, and a full mile
away from the meanest was the stone cottage of Mother Carke.

Let not my southern reader who associates ideas of comfort with the
term "cottage" mistake. This thing is built of shingle, with low walls.
Its thatch is hollow; the peat-smoke curls stingily from its stunted
chimney. It is worthy of its savage surroundings.
The primitive neighbours remark that no rowan-tree grows near, nor
holly, nor bracken, and no horseshoe is nailed on the door.
Not far from the birches and hazels that straggle about the rude wall of
the little enclosure, on the contrary, they say, you may discover the
broom and the rag-wort, in which witches mysteriously delight. But
this is perhaps a scandal.
Mall Carke was for many a year the sage femme of this wild domain.
She has renounced practice, however, for some years; and now, under
the rose, she dabbles, it is thought, in the black art, in which she has
always been secretly skilled, tells fortunes, practises charms, and in
popular esteem is little better than a witch.
Mother Carke has been away to the town of Willarden, to sell knit
stockings, and is returning to her rude dwelling by Dardale Moss. To
her right, as far away as the eye can reach, the moor stretches. The
narrow track she has followed here tops a gentle upland, and at her left
a sort of jungle of dwarf-oak and brushwood approaches its edge. The
sun is sinking blood-red in the west. His disk has touched the broad
black level of the moor, and his parting beams glare athwart the gaunt
figure of the old beldame, as she strides homeward stick in hand, and
bring into relief the folds of her mantle, which gleam like the draperies
of a bronze image in the light of a fire. For a few moments this light
floods the air--tree, gorse, rock, and bracken glare; and then it is out,
and gray twilight over everything.
All is still and sombre. At this hour the simple traffic of the
thinly-peopled country is over, and nothing can be more solitary.
From this jungle, nevertheless, through which the mists of evening are
already creeping, she sees a gigantic man approaching her.

In that poor and primitive country robbery is a crime unknown. She,
therefore, has no fears for her pound of tea, and pint of gin, and sixteen
shillings in silver which she is bringing home in her pocket. But there is
something that would have frighted another woman about this man.
He is gaunt, sombre, bony, dirty, and dressed in a black suit which a
beggar would hardly care to pick out of the dust.
This ill-looking man nodded to her as he stepped on the road.
"I don't know you," she said.
He nodded again.
"I never sid ye neyawheere," she exclaimed sternly.
"Fine evening, Mother Carke," he says, and holds his snuff-box toward
her.
She widened the distance between them by a step or so, and said again
sternly and pale,
"I hev nowt to