Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net Uncanny Tales BY MRS MOLESWORTH LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO Paternoster Row FRED HYLAND TO AN OTHERWISE UNACKNOWLEDGED "COLLABORATEUR" IN THESE STORIES, J. C. P. 19 SUMNER PLACE, S.W., _October, 1896._ CONTENTS. PAGE THE SHADOW IN THE MOONLIGHT 1 "THE MAN WITH THE COUGH" 82 "HALF-WAY BETWEEN THE STILES" 112 AT THE DIP OF THE ROAD 141 "---- WILL NOT TAKE PLACE" 153 THE CLOCK THAT STRUCK THIRTEEN 183 UNCANNY TALES. THE SHADOW IN THE MOONLIGHT. PART I. We never thought of Finster St. Mabyn's being haunted. We really never did. This may seem strange, but it is absolutely true. It was such an extremely interesting and curious place in many ways that it required nothing extraneous to add to its attractions. Perhaps this was the reason. Now-a-days, immediately that you hear of a house being "very old," the next remark is sure to be "I hope it is"--or "is not"--that depends on the taste of the speaker--"haunted". But Finster was more than very old; it was _ancient_ and, in a modest way, historical. I will not take up time by relating its history, however, or by referring my readers to the chronicles in which mention of it may be found. Nor shall I yield to the temptation of describing the room in which a certain royalty spent one night, if not two or three nights, four centuries ago, or the tower, now in ruins, where an even more renowned personage was imprisoned for several months. All these facts--or legends--have nothing to do with what I have to tell. Nor, strictly speaking, has Finster itself, except as a sort of prologue to my narrative. We heard of the house through friends living in the same county, though some distance farther inland. They--Mr. and Miss Miles, it is convenient to give their name at once--knew that we had been ordered to leave our own home for some months, to get over the effects of a very trying visitation of influenza, and that sea-air was specially desirable. We grumbled at this. Seaside places are often so dull and commonplace. But when we heard of Finster we grumbled no longer. "Dull" in a sense it might be, but assuredly not "commonplace". Janet Miles's description of it, though she was not particularly clever at description, read like a fairy tale, or one of Longfellow's poems. "A castle by the sea--how perfect!" we all exclaimed. "Do, oh, do fix for it, mother!"