The Project Gutenberg EBook of Uncle Silas, by J. S. LeFanu

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Uncle Silas
A Tale of Bartram-Haugh

Author: J. S. LeFanu

Release Date: January 31, 2005 [EBook #14851]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNCLE SILAS ***

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Bob McKillip and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

[Transcriber's note: The spelling inconsistencies of the original have
been retained in this etext.]

UNCLE SILAS

A Tale of Bartram-Haugh

By J. S. LeFanu

1899

TO
THE RIGHT HON.
THE COUNTESS OF GIFFORD,
AS A TOKEN OF
RESPECT, SYMPATHY, AND ADMIRATION
_This Tale_
IS INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR

_A PRELIMINARY WORD_

The writer of this Tale ventures, in his own person, to address a very few
words, chiefly of explanation, to his readers. A leading situation in this
'Story of Bartram-Haugh' is repeated, with a slight variation, from a short
magazine tale of some fifteen pages written by him, and published long ago
in a periodical under the title of 'A Passage in the Secret History of an
Irish Countess,' and afterwards, still anonymously, in a small volume under
an altered title. It is very unlikely that any of his readers should have
encountered, and still more so that they should remember, this trifle. The
bare possibility, however, he has ventured to anticipate by this brief
explanation, lest he should be charged with plagiarism--always a disrespect
to a reader.

May he be permitted a few words also of remonstrance against the
promiscuous application of the term 'sensation' to that large school of
fiction which transgresses no one of those canons of construction and
morality which, in producing the unapproachable 'Waverley Novels,' their
great author imposed upon himself? No one, it is assumed, would describe
Sir Walter Scott's romances as 'sensation novels;' yet in that marvellous
series there is not a single tale in which death, crime, and, in some form,
mystery, have not a place.

Passing by those grand romances of 'Ivanhoe,' 'Old Mortality,' and
'Kenilworth,' with their terrible intricacies of crime and bloodshed,
constructed with so fine a mas