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2

ries are dedicated to all those who at various times have listened to them.

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CONTENTS

PART 1: GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY

Canon Alberic's Scrap-book Lost Hearts The Mezzotint The Ash-tree Number 13 Count Magnus 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' The Treasure of Abbot Thomas

PART 2: MORE GHOST STORIES

A School Story The Rose Garden The Tractate Middoth Casting the Runes The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral Martin's Close Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance

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PART 1: GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY

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If anyone is curious about my local settings, let it be recorded that St Bertrand de Comminges and Viborg are real places: that in 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You' I had Felixstowe in mind. As for the fragments of ostensible erudition which are scattered about my pages, hardly anything in them is not pure invention; there never was, naturally, any such book as that which I quote in 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas'. 'Canon Alberic's Scrap-book' was written in 1894 and printed soon after in the National Review, 'Lost Hearts' appeared in the Pall Mall Magazine; of the next five stories, most of which were read to friends at Christmas-time at King's College, Cambridge, I only recollect that I wrote 'Number 13' in 1899, while 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' was composed in the summer of 1904.

M. R. JAMES

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CANON ALBERIC'S SCRAP-BOOK

St Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the Pyrenees, not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to Bagnères-de-Luchon. It was the site of a bishopric until the Revolution, and has a cathedral which is visited by a certain number of tourists. In the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world place--I can hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not a thousand inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from Toulouse to see St Bertrand's Church, and had left two friends, w

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