The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Necromancers, by Robert Hugh Benson

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Title: The Necromancers

Author: Robert Hugh Benson

Release Date: December 6, 2004 [EBook #14275]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE NECROMANCERS

_Other books by Robert Hugh Benson_

_The Light Invisible_
_By What Authority?_
_The King's Achievement_
_The History of Richard Reynall, Solitary_
_The Queen's Tragedy_
_The Religion of the Plain Man_
_The Sanctity of the Church_
_The Sentimentalists_
_Lord of the World_
_A Mirror of Shalott, composed of tales told at a symposium_
_Papers of a Pariah_
_The Conventionalists_
_The Holy Blissful Martyr Saint Thomas of Canterbury_
_The Dissolution of the Religious Houses_
_The Necromancers_
_Non-Catholic Denominations_
_None Other Gods_
_A Winnowing_
_Christ in the Church: a volume of religious essays_
_The Dawn of All_
_Come Rack! Come Rope!_
_The Coward_
_The Friendship of Christ_
_An Average Man_
_Confessions of a Convert_
_Optimism_
_Paradoxes of Catholicism_
_Poems_
_Initiation_
_Oddsfish!_
_Spiritual Letters of Monsignor R. Hugh Benson to one of his converts_
_Loneliness_
_Sermon Notes_

THE NECROMANCERS

Robert Hugh Benson

First published in 1909.

Wildside Press
Doylestown, Pennsylvania

I must express my gratitude to the Rev. Father Augustine Howard,
O.P., who has kindly read this book in manuscript and favored me with
his criticisms.

--Robert Hugh Benson.

_Chapter I_

I

"I am very much distressed about it all," murmured Mrs. Baxter.

She was a small, delicate-looking old lady, very true to type indeed,
with the silvery hair of the devout widow crowned with an exquisite
lace cap, in a filmy black dress, with a complexion of precious china,
kind shortsighted blue eyes, and white blue-veined hands busy now upon
needlework. She bore about with her always an atmosphere of piety,
humble, tender, and sincere, but as p