mysterious nobleman, whose body lies in a richly ornate copper sarcophagus that stands the principal feature of a domed mausoleum at the eastern end of the church. Reluctantly the landlord tells a story which happened in the time of his grandfather ninety-two years before. Two men determined to go at night and have a free hunt in the woods upon the estate. They are warned: “No, do not go; we are sure you will meet with persons walking who should not be walking. They should be resting, not walking.” The two men laughed and cried: “The Count is dead; we do not care for him.” But in the night the villagers “hear someone scream, just as if the most inside part of his soul was twisted out of him.” Then they hear a hideous laugh, “it was not one of those two men that laughed, and, indeed, they have all of them said that it was not any man at all.” In the morning they go out with the priest, and they find one of the men dead, killed in so terrible a fashion that they buried him on the spot. “He was once a beautiful man, but now his face was not there, because the flesh of it was sucked away off the bones.” The other man is standing with his back against a tree, “pushing with his hands—pushing something away from him which was not there.”
There was some vague gossip that the Count had been “on the Black Pilgrimage, and had brought something or someone back with him.” During his investigation of the papers the English traveller, Mr. Wraxall, found a Liber nigrae peregrinationis, or at least a few lines of such a document indicating that the County had once journeyed to the city of Chorazin and there adored the prince of the air. In careless mood as he is passing near the mausoleum, Mr. Wraxall exclaims: “Ah, Count Magnus, there you are. I should dearly like to see you.” He is indiscreet enough to cry out thus flippantly on two further occasions, and at last he is thoroughly alarmed by hearing the sound of metal hinges creaking and he knows that the sarcophagus is slowly opening wide. In a state of frenzied fear he sets out for England the next day, yet turn and double as he will he is everywhere haunted by two hideous figures, a man in a long black cloak and a broad-leafed hat and something in a dark cloak and hood. Upon landing at Harwich he makes his way across country to a neighbouring village, when on looking out of the
