The legs of the appearance alone could be plainly
discerned, and they were horribly thin. From five to seven the three companions sat and watched the picture by
turns. But it never changed. They agreed at last that it would be safe
to leave it, and that they would return after Hall and await further
developments. When they assembled again, at the earliest possible moment, the
engraving was there, but the figure was gone, and the house was quiet
under the moonbeams. There was nothing for it but to spend the evening
over gazetteers and guide-books. Williams was the lucky one at last,
and perhaps he deserved it. At 11.30 p.m. he read from Murray’s _Guide
to Essex_ the following lines:

16½ miles, _Anningley_. The church has been an interesting building of
Norman date, but was extensively classicized in the last century. It
contains the tomb of the family of Francis, whose mansion, Anningley
Hall, a solid Queen Anne house, stands immediately beyond the
churchyard in a park of about 80 acres. The family is now extinct, the
last heir having disappeared mysteriously in infancy in the year 1802. The father, Mr Arthur Francis, was locally known as a talented amateur
engraver in mezzotint. After his son’s disappearance he lived in
complete retirement at the Hall, and was found dead in his studio on
the third anniversary of the disaster, having just completed an
engraving of the house, impressions of which are of considerable
rarity. This looked like business, and, indeed, Mr Green on his return at once
identified the house as Anningley Hall. “Is there any kind of explanation of the figure, Green?” was the
question which Williams naturally asked. “I don’t know, I’m sure, Williams. What used to be said in the place
when I first knew it, which was before I came up here, was just this:
old Francis was always very much down on these poaching fellows, and
whenever he got a chance he used to get a man whom he suspected of it
turned off the estate, and by degrees he got rid of them all but one. Squires could do a lot of things then that they daren’t think of now. Well, this man that was left was what you find pretty often in that
country—the last remains of a very old family. I believe they were
Lords of the Manor at one time. I recollect just the same thing in my
own parish.”

“What, like the man in _Tess o’ the Durbervilles_?” Williams put in. “Yes, I dare say; it’s not a book I could ever read myself. But this
fellow could show a row of tombs in the church there that belonged to
his ancestors, and all that went to sour him a bit; but Francis, they
said, could never get at him—he always kept just on the right side of
the law—until one night the keepers found him at it in a wood right at
the end of the estate. I could show you the place now; it marches with
some land that used to belong to an uncle of mine. And you can imagine
there was a row; and this man Gawdy (that was the name, to be
sure—Gawdy; I thought I should get it—Gawdy), he was unlucky enough,
poor chap! to shoot a keeper. Well, that was what Francis wanted, and
grand juries—you know what they would have been then—and poor Gawdy was
strung up in double-quick time; and I’ve been shown the place he was
buried in, on the north side of the church—you know the way in that
part of the world: anyone that’s been hanged or made away with
themselves, they bury them that side. And the idea was that some friend
of Gawdy’s—not a relation, because he had none, poor devil! he was the
last of his line: kind of _spes ultima gentis_—must have planned to get
hold of Francis’s boy and put an end to _his_ line, too. I don’t
know—it’s rather an out-of-the-way thing for an Essex poacher to think
of—but, you know, I should say now it looks more as if old Gawdy had
managed the job himself. Booh! I hate to think of it! have some whisky,
Williams!”

The facts were communicated by Williams to Dennistoun, and by him to a
mixed company, of which I was one, and the Sadducean Professor of
Ophiology another. I am sorry to say that the latter, when asked what
he thought of it, only remarked: “Oh, those Bridgeford people will say
anything”—a sentiment which met with the reception it deserved. I have only to add that the picture is now in the Ashleian Museum; that
it has been treated with a view to discovering whether sympathetic ink
has been used in it, but without effect; that Mr Britnell knew nothing
of it save that he was sure it was uncommon; and that, though carefully
watched, it has never been known to change again. THE ASH-TREE


Everyone who has travelled over Eastern England knows the smaller
country-houses with which it is studded—the rather dank little
buildings, usually in the Italian style, surrounded with parks of some
eighty to a hundred acres. For me they have always had a very strong
attraction: with the grey paling of split oak, the noble trees, the
meres with their reed-beds, and the line of distant woods. Then, I like
the pillared portico—perhaps stuck on to a red-brick Queen Anne house
which has been faced with stucco to bring it into line with the
“Grecian” taste of the end of the eighteenth century; the hall inside,
going up to the roof, which hall ought always to be provided with a
gallery and a small organ. I like the library, too, where you may find
anything from a Psalter of the thirteenth century to a Shakespeare
quarto. I like the pictures, of course; and perhaps most of all I like
fancying what life in such a house was when it was first built, and in
the piping times of landlords’ prosperity, and not least now, when, if
money is not so plentiful, taste is more varied and life quite as
interesting. I wish to have one of these houses, and enough money to
keep it together and entertain my friends in it modestly. But this is a digression. I have to tell you of a curious series of
events which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It
is Castringham Hall in Suffolk. I think a good deal has been done to
the building since the period of my story, but the essential features I
have sketched are still there—Italian portico, square block of white
house, older inside than out, park with fringe of woods, and mere. The
one feature that marked out the house from a score of others is gone. As you looked at it from the park, you saw on the right a great old
ash-tree growing within half a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or
quite touching the building with its branches. I suppose it had stood
there ever since Castringham ceased to be a fortified place, and since
the moat was filled in and the Elizabethan dwelling-house built. At any
rate, it had well-nigh attained its full dimensions in the year 1690. In that year the district in which the Hall is situated was the scene
of a number of witch-trials. It will be long, I think, before we arrive
at a just estimate of the amount of solid reason—if there was any—which
lay at the root of the universal fear of witches in old times.