Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01 Read Online Free

Pursuivant. He gave me this. But let me say that
what interests me about you, Father, is that you're supposed to be working
toward a history of this interesting little town.”
                 “This
little hamlet,” Gates said, using the same word that Hawes had used at the
Moonraven. “I should explain first why I happen to be here. I came as a curate
to the parish at Gerrinsford, which includes Claines. But there’s a bequest, a
very old bequest, that provides for St. Jude’s to be
kept active, and so my vicar assigned me here. I’m not a true vicar as yet.”
                 He
spoke as though he wanted to be a true vicar, and Thunstone said, “TTiat will
follow, I’d think.”
                 “I
hope so. I’ve done some articles on church matters that have attracted
attention, and I have encouragement about the publication of my history of
Claines.”
                 “I’ve
already called Claines an interesting town,” offered Thunstone.
                 “We
call it a hamlet because it isn’t truly a town,” said Gates. “We haven’t a
mayor or any local government. No police department except Constable Dymock.
And we aren’t a parish; we have just St. Jude’s and myself as curate. We don’t have even a great house.”
                 “How about Chimney Pots?” Thunstone asked.
                 “Oh,”
and Gates smiled, “a pleasant place enough, but hardly a stately home of England . Have you been to any of those?”
                 “To
a couple, with coach tours,” Thunstone told him. “Frankly, I felt like an
intruder when I walked in. Of course, I was making certain studies.”
                 “Certain
studies,” Gates echoed. “If I may hazard a guess, you’re a university man.”
                 “Not
exactly,” said Thunstone, shaking his dark head. “I went to a small southern
college—Carrington—because I could get some modest financial help if I played
football there. After that, I took some graduate courses at Columbia in New York City and at the University of North Carolina , but no degree at either school.”
                 “You
say you played American football,” said Gates.
                 “I
was a center. That's not a particularly glorious position.”
                 “Is
that anywhere near as violent a game as rugby? I played footer in public
school, but I only boxed for my university.”
                 “From
what I've seen of English football,” said Thunstone, “I’d hazard a guess that
if you got into the American game in the gear you wear here, you’d be lucky to
live two minutes.” He changed the subject. “But you said that you’re writing a
history of Claines.” “That is correct. It’s a small place, but its history is a
long one.” As Gates told it, it was a long history. Nobody could be sure how
old Claines might be as a community. All that records could be made to show was
that some sort of settlement had existed there since Roman times, and
occasional digs and probings—it was hard for scholars to get permission to dig,
it seemed—revealed that people had lived there in pre-Roman times, yes, even
back to the Stone Age. Flint points had been turned up there, the sort of things that country people
called elf arrows and even saw as weapons of supernatural force. And in
medieval days, armed bands of rival lords had skirmished back and forth there.
                 But
Claines, though so old, had never grown large. That, said Gates, was because it
had never truly had room to grow. It stood on a sort of hummock of turfy
ground, bounded in by marsh and fen. An example of that bounding was the turbid
stream over which Thunstone had come in the bus, which bore the uninviting name
of Congdon Mire. There might be three hundred residents or so, most of them
employed in nearby Gerrinsford in factories and