Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James by M.R. James

preacher’s desk.
    Such sights as these may be seen in many a church in Sweden now, but what distinguished this one was an addition to the original building. At the eastern end of the north aisle the builder of the manor-house had erected a mausoleum for himself and his family. It was a largish eight-sided building, lighted by a series of oval windows, and it had a domed roof, topped by a kind of pumpkin-shaped object rising into a spire, a form in which Swedish architects greatly delighted. The roof was of copper externally, and was painted black, while the walls, in common with those of the church, were staringly white. To this mausoleum there was no access from the church. It had a portal and steps of its own on the northern side.
    Past the churchyard the path to the village goes, and not more than three or four minutes bring you to the inn door.
    On the first day of his stay at Råbäck Mr. Wraxall found the church door open, and made these notes of the interior which I have epitomized. Into the mausoleum, however, he could not make his way. He could, by looking through the keyhole, just descry that there were fine marble effigies and sarcophagi of copper, and a wealth of armorial ornament, which made him very anxious to spend some time in investigation.
    The papers he had come to examine at the manor-house proved to be just the kind of thing he wanted for his book. There were family correspondence, journals, and account-books of the earliest owners of the estate, very carefully kept and clearly written, full of amusing and picturesque detail.
    The first De la Gardie appeared in them as a strong and capable man. Shortly after the building of the mansion there had been a period of distress in the district, and the peasants had risen and attacked several châteaux and done some damage. The owner of Råbäck took a leading part in suppressing the trouble, and there was reference to executions of ringleaders and severe punishments inflicted with no sparing hand.
    The portrait of this Magnus de la Gardie was one of the best in the house, and Mr. Wraxall studied it with no little interest after his day’s work. He gives no detailed description of it, but I gather that the face impressed him rather by its power than by its beauty or goodness. In fact, he writes that Count Magnus was an almost phenomenally ugly man.
    On this day Mr. Wraxall took his supper with the family, and walked back in the late but still bright evening.
    I must remember
, he writes,
to ask the sexton if he can let me into the mausoleum at the church. He evidently has access to it himself, for I saw him tonight standing in the steps, and, as I thought, either locking or unlocking the door.
    I find that early on the following day Mr. Wraxall had some conversation with his landlord. His setting it down at such length as he does surprised me at first; but I soon realized that the papers I was reading here were, at least in their beginning, the materials for the book he was meditating, and that it was to have been one of those quasi-journalistic productions which admit of the introduction of an admixture of conversational matter.
    His object, he says, was to find out whether any traditions of Count Magnus de la Gardie lingered on in the scenes of that gentleman’s activity,and whether the popular estimate of him were favorable or not. He found that the Count was decidedly not a favorite.
    If his tenants came late to their work on the days which they owed to him as Lord of the Manor, they were set on the wooden horse, or flogged and branded in the manor-house yard. One or two cases there were of men who had occupied lands which encroached on the lord’s domain, and whose houses had been mysteriously burned on a winter’s night, with the whole family inside. But what seemed to dwell on the innkeeper’s mind most—for he returned to the subject more than once—was that the Count had been on the Black Pilgrimage, and had brought something or someone back with