Page:Moonfleet - John Meade Falkner.pdf/16

 My name is John Trenchard, and I was fifteen years of age when this story begins. My father and mother had both been dead for years, and I boarded with my aunt, Miss Arnold, who was kind to me in her own fashion, but too strict and precise ever to make me love her.

I shall first speak of one evening in the fall of the year 1757. It must have been late in October, though I have forgotten the exact date, and I sat in the little front parlour reading after tea. My aunt had few books—a Bible, a Common Prayer, and some volumes of sermons are all that I can recollect now—but the Reverend Mr. Glennie, who taught us village children, had lent me a story-book, full of interest and adventure, called the "Arabian Nights Entertainment." At last the light began to fail, and I was nothing loath to leave off reading for several reasons—as, first, the parlour was a chilly room with horsehair chairs and sofa, and only a coloured paper screen in the grate, for my aunt did not allow a fire till the first of November; second, there was a rank smell of molten tallow in the house, for my aunt was dipping winter candles on frames in the back kitchen; third, I had reached a part in the "Arabian Nights" which tightened my breath and made me wish to leave off reading for very anxiousness of expectation. It was that point in the story of the "Wonderful Lamp" where the false uncle lets fall a stone that seals the mouth of the underground chamber; and immures the boy, Aladdin, in the darkness, because he would not give up the lamp till he stood safe on the surface again. This scene reminded me of one of those dreadful nightmares where we dream we are shut