The Greatest Uncanny Stories of E. F. Benson - 25 Titles in One Edition. E.F. Benson

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The Greatest Uncanny Stories of E. F. Benson - 25 Titles in One Edition - E.F. Benson

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       E. F. Benson

      The Greatest Uncanny Stories of E. F. Benson - 25 Titles in One Edition

      Supernatural, Mystery, Ghost and Haunting Tales

      Published by

      Books

      - Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting -

       [email protected]

      2017 OK Publishing

      ISBN 978-80-272-3613-8

      Table of Contents

       Spook Stories

       Reconciliation

       The Face

       Spinach

       Bagnell Terrace

       A Tale of an Empty House

       Naboth's Vineyard

       Expiation

       Home, Sweet Home

       "And No Bird Sings"

       The Corner House

       Corstophine

       The Temple

       More Spook Stories

       The Step

       The Bed by the Window

       James Lamp

       The Dance

       The Hanging of Alfred Wadham

       Pirates

       The Wishing-Well

       The Bath-Chair

       Monkeys

       Christopher Comes Back

       The Sanctuary

       Thursday Evenings

       The Psychical Mallards

      Spook Stories

       Table of Contents

      I

      Reconciliation

       Table of Contents

      Garth Place lies low in a dip of the hills which, north, east, and west, enclose its sequestered valley, as in the palm of a hollowed hand. To the south the valley broadens out and the encompassing hills merge themselves into the wide strip of flat country once reclaimed from the sea, and now, with intersections of drainage dykes, forming the fat pasture of the scattered farms. Thick woods of beech and oak, which climb the hillsides above the house up to the top of the ridge, give it further shelter, and it dozes in a soft and sundered climate of its own when the bleak uplands above it are swept by the east winds of spring or the northerly blasts of winter; and, sitting in its terraced garden in the mild sunshine of a clear December day, you may hear the gale roaring through the tree-tops on the upper slopes, and see the clouds scudding high above you, yet never feel a breath of the wind that shreds them seawards. The clearings in these woods are thick with anemones and full-blown clumps of primroses a month before the tiniest bud has appeared in the copses of the upland, and its gardens are still bright with the red blossoms of the autumn long after the flower-borders in the village that huddles on the hill-top to the west have been blackened by the frosts. Only when the south wind blows is its tranquillity disturbed, and then the sound of the waves is heard, and the wind is salt with the sea.

      The house itself dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century, and has miraculously escaped the destructive hand of the restorer. Its three low storeys are built of the grey stone of the district, the roof is made of thin slabs of the same, between which the blown seeds have found anchorage, and the broad mullioned windows are many-paned. Never a creak comes from its oaken floors, solid and broad are its staircases, its panelling is as firm as the walls in which it is laid. A faint odour of wood smoke from the centuries of fires that have burned on its open hearths pervades it, that and an extraordinary silence. A man who lay awake all night in one of its chambers would hear no whisper of cracking wood-work, or rattling pane, and all night long there would come to his listening ears no sound from outside but the hoot of the tawny owl, or in June the music of the nightingale. At the back a strip of garden has been anciently levelled out of the hillside, in front the slope has been built up to form a couple of terraces. Below, a spring feeds a small sheet of water, bordered by marshy ground set with

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