Page:James - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary .djvu/39

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
14
GHOST-STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY

the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauléon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection Dennistoun had hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than 700 A.D. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told him at once, must belong to some very early unknown patristic treatise. Could it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias 'On the Words of Our Lord,' which was known to have existed as late as the twelfth century at Nîmes?[1] In any case, his mind was made

  1. We now know that these leaves did contain a considerable fragment of that work, if not of that actual copy of it.