Oliver Onions

“ The south lawn was overlooked by an octagonal bay-window, from the flat leads of which (so the keeper said) dead and gone lords of the manor and their chaplains had addressed the assembled tenantry; and this bay formed one end of a long western wing that I judged to be the chapel turned library. To the north lay the courtyard and outbuildings; and to the east, not twenty yards away, was the placid sea and the brig motionless over Kempery. ”

“ Ower th' Wolds, are ye? Well, it's a good air o' th' Wolds. They ha' farmed part about here too, but it's a black ear and thin crops; that's th' fogs.... Ay, we fish—hark! yon's a pike—trout and eels and roach and pike—and tak' birds for th' markets. Ye'll be a arable man; all's carrs hereabouts; but I don't doubt ye know all about Skelf-Mary. ”

“ Very well.—There's little gossip i' Skelf-Mary now, by reason o' there being few folk, but I'll be rid o' what I know. They say it'll be Eustace he sees, that was a priest; but ye needn't tak' that fro' me. When he had th' vault oppened he asked this and that and t'other, and if he says th' men was flayed, he's right.—They couldn't sort out which were which—ye understand—and th' breed's as ugly living as dead to my way o' thinking. He talked about nowt but 'knees' ... faugh! Whose knees he wanted ye know as much as me; but th' sexton lives ower at Windlesea. ”

“ The keeper pointed to a three-inch fissure at my feet.
“That's th' next,” he said, gloomily; “th' first heavy rain—a touch o' frost—th' sea eats it down there, and a touch o' frost and rain.... Yonder's Kempery.” ... ”

“ His face was within a foot of mine, and I barely checked a sound that, for all the early morning, was one of fright. Few men but in an idle moment now and then have tried that trick of gazing into metals, and phials, and flames of candles; and of the stupor or lethargy a man can work in himself by these means I had read in Olaus Magnus, in Suavius, and elsewhere. Neither was I entirely ignorant of that disordered function of the mind whereby a man can people the world with images of his own raising ”

“ I think them's tales; but Kempery and Flaxton isn't tales. Th' Sheriff o' Kingston, he'll show ye th' Court Rolls o' Flaxton; and Kempery—I'll show ye where Kempery is to-morrow, for ye'd best bide wi' me to-night.—Ay, they took Flaxton Church to Windlesea i' carts; and then there's sea-marks....”
“In a word, the sea's advancing?”
“Ay; sometimes just licking-like, and sometimes a dozen yards of a sudden; ye'll see to-morrow.—And th' sea doesn't keep all it taks, neither. Ye'll be a arable man, say ”

“ This I set down in pity to his lunacy, and he continued to mutter fragments. “A mischance to the mortal remains ... but the hinds in yonder vault were too terrified ... and then, what correspondence.... ”