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<h1 align="center">THE HOUSE ON<br/> THE BORDERLAND</h1>
<h2 align="center">William Hope Hodgson</h2>
<p class="c"><em>
From the Manuscript discovered in 1877 by Messrs. Tonnison and Berreggnog
in the Ruins that <br/>
lie to the South of the Village of Kraighten, in the
West of Ireland. Set out here, with Notes</em>.</p>
<br/>
<h2>TO MY FATHER</h2>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align="left"><em>(Whose feet tread the lost aeons)</em></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Open the door,</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> And listen!</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Only the wind's muffled roar,</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> And the glisten</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Of tears 'round the moon.</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> And, in fancy, the tread</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Of vanishing shoon—</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> Out in the night with the Dead.</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">"Hush! And hark</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> To the sorrowful cry</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Of the wind in the dark.</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> Hush and hark, without murmur or sigh,</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> To shoon that tread the lost aeons:</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> To the sound that bids you to die.</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Hush and hark! Hush and Hark!"</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><em>Shoon of the Dead</em></td></tr>
</table>
<br/>
<br/>
<h2>AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE MANUSCRIPT</h2>
<p>Many are the hours in which I have pondered upon the story that is set
forth in the following pages. I trust that my instincts are not awry
when they prompt me to leave the account, in simplicity, as it was
handed to me.</p>
<p>And the MS. itself—You must picture me, when first it was given into my
care, turning it over, curiously, and making a swift, jerky examination.
A small book it is; but thick, and all, save the last few pages, filled
with a quaint but legible handwriting, and writ very close. I have the
queer, faint, pit-water smell of it in my nostrils now as I write, and
my fingers have subconscious memories of the soft, "cloggy" feel of the
long-damp pages.</p>
<p>I read, and, in reading, lifted the Curtains of the Impossible that
blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abrupt
sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against
their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing,
is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old
Recluse, of the vanished house, had striven to tell.</p>
<p>Of the simple, stiffly given account of weird and extraordinary matters,
I will say little. It lies before you. The inner story must be
uncovered, personally, by each reader, according to ability and desire.
And even should any fail to see, as now I see, the shadowed picture and
conception of that to which one may well give the accepted titles of
Heaven and Hell; yet can I promise certain thrills, merely taking the
story as a story.</p>
<p>WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON December 17, 1907</p>
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