The Papers of Montague Rhodes James

The story begins 'A young man is leaning over a gate that leads into a wood'. The story involves a young man called John Humphreys, and has other elements in common with 'Mr Humphreys and his inheritance' (published in 'More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary', 1911), such as the 'small Irish yew' which Humphreys sees from his window one night, but which is gone the next day. The plot and catastrophe are wholly different, and there is no maze in the manuscript story, which should be described rather as an earlier story about John Humphreys than as an early draft of the published story. The autograph manuscript text is in ink, with substantial alterations; it is incomplete, the conclusion [?1 leaf] is missing.