hout the ages. It began to attain some real standing in
literature,--to take its definite place,--a little more than a century
ago. Like the apparition it embodies it had always been--and is still
to-day even--more or less discredited. Mrs. Radcliffe gave it a new
being and even a certain dignity in her "Castle of Otranto"; and after
her came Sir Walter Scott who frankly surrendered to the power and charm
of the theme. The line of succession has been continuous. The ghost has
held his own with his human fellow in fiction, and his tale has been
told with increasing skill as the art of the writer has developed.
To-day the case for the ghost as an element in fiction is an exceedingly
strong one. There has indeed sprung into being within a couple of
decades a new school of such writers. Nowadays almost every fictionist
of account produces one good thriller at least of this sort. The
temptation is irresistible for the simple reason that the theme imposes
absolutely no limit on the imagination.

The reader will find here a careful selection illustrating the growth in
art of this exotic in literature during the past fifty years, and for a
contrast, spanning the centuries, the naive narration of Pliny the
Younger.

JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE LISTENER 3
_Algernon Blackwood_

II. NUMBER 13 45
_Montague Rhodes James_

III. JOSEPH: A STORY 70
_Katherine Rickford_

IV. THE HORLA 84
_Guy de Maupassant_

V. THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS 123
_William F. Harvey_

VI. SISTER MADDELENA 167
_Ralph Adams Cram_

VII. THRAWN JANET 191
_Robert Louis Stevenson_

VIII. THE YELLOW CAT 207
_Wilbur Daniel Steele_

IX. LETTER TO SURA 237
_Pliny the Younger_

MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY

Masterpieces of Mystery

_GHOST STORIES_

THE LISTENER[A]

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

Sept. 4.--I have hunted all over London for rooms suited to my
income--L120 a year--and have at last found them. Two rooms, without
modern conveniences, it is true, and in an old, ramshackle building, but
within a stone's throw of P-- Place and