The House by the Church-Yard
Authorship not stated
You play Doctor Walsingham, called out on a stormy midnight by an unsigned letter to witness a burial nobody will explain. At the church, a pale stranger named Mervyn arrives with an old lead coffin marked only R. D. and a coronet, and authority enough to direct the rite but not to name it. Your daughter Lily hears the account without pressing you on the face Mervyn recalls, until he appears again at breakfast, asking who now owns the ground beside the vault you just sealed.
Read The House by the Church-YardChapters
- The Nameless CoffinChapelizod, 1767