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

only in being rather better off and in a more influential position. Efforts were made to save her by several reputable farmers of the parish. They did their best to testify to her character, and showed considerable anxiety as to the verdict of the jury.
    But what seems to have been fatal to the woman was the evidence of the then proprietor of Castringham Hall—Sir Matthew Fell. He deposed to having watched her on three different occasions from his window, at the full of the moon, gathering sprigs “from the ash-tree near my house.”
    She had climbed into the branches, clad only in her shift, and was cutting off small twigs with a peculiarly curved knife, and as she did so she seemed to be talking to herself. On each occasion Sir Matthew had done his best to capture the woman, but she had always taken alarm at some accidental noise he had made, and all he could see when he got down to thegarden was a hare running across the park in the direction of the village.
    On the third night he had been at the pains to follow at his best speed, and had gone straight to Mrs. Mothersole’s house. But he had had to wait a quarter of an hour battering at her door, and then she had come out very cross, and apparently very sleepy, as if just out of bed. And he had no good explanation to offer of his visit.
    Mainly on this evidence, though there was much more of a less striking and unusual kind from other parishioners, Mrs. Mothersole was found guilty and condemned to die. She was hanged a week after the trial, with five or six more unhappy creatures, at Bury St. Edmunds.
    Sir Matthew Fell, then Deputy-Sheriff, was present at the execution.
    It was a damp, drizzly March morning when the cart made its way up the rough grass hill outside Northgate, where the gallows stood. The other victims were apathetic or broken down with misery, but Mrs. Mothersole was, as in life so in death, of a very different temper.
    Her “poysonous Rage,” as a reporter of the time puts it, “did so work upon the Bystanders—yea, even upon the Hangman—that it was constantly affirmed of all that saw her that she presented the living Aspect of a mad Divell. Yet she offer’d no Resistance to the Officers of the Law. Only she looked upon those that laid Hands upon her with so direful and venomous an Aspect that—as one of them afterward assured me—the mere Thought of it preyed inwardly upon his Mind for six Months after.”
    However, all that she is reported to have said was the seemingly meaningless words: “There will be guests at the Hall.” Which she repeated more than once in an undertone.
    Sir Matthew Fell was not unimpressed by the bearing of the woman. He had some talk upon the matter with the Vicar of his parish, with whom he traveled home after the assize business was over.
    His evidence at the trial had not been very willingly given. He was not specially infected with the witch-finding mania, but he declared, then and afterward, that he could not give any other account of the matter than that he had given, and that he could not possibly have been mistaken as to what he saw.
    The whole transaction had been repugnant to him, for he was a man who liked to be on pleasant terms with those about him. But he saw a duty to be done in this business, and he had done it. That seems to have been the gistof his sentiments, and the Vicar applauded it, as any reasonable man must have done.
    A few weeks after, when the moon of May was at the full, Vicar and Squire met again in the park, and walked to the Hall together. Lady Fell was with her mother, who was dangerously ill, and Sir Matthew was alone at home; so the Vicar, Mr. Crome, was easily persuaded to take a late supper at the Hall.
    Sir Matthew was not very good company this evening. The talk ran chiefly on family and parish matters, and, as luck would have it, Sir Matthew made a memorandum in writing of certain wishes or intentions of his regarding his estates, which afterward proved exceedingly