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

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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: ASCII

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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 f