Though with feminine susceptibility, my companions caught all the

melancholy associations of the scene, yet these could but imperfectly

overcome the gayety of girlish spirits. Their emotions came and went

with quick vicissitude, and sometimes combined to form a peculiar and

delicious excitement, the mirth brightening the gloom into a sunny shower

of feeling, and a rainbow in the mind. My own more sombre mood was

tinged by theirs. With now a merry word and next a sad one, we trod

among the tangled weeds, and almost hoped that our feet would sink into

the hollow of a witch’s grave. Such vestiges were to be found within the

memory of man, but have vanished now, and with them, I believe, all

traces of the precise spot of the executions. On the long and broad

ridge of the eminence, there is no very decided elevation of any one

point, nor other prominent marks, except the decayed stumps of two trees,

standing near each other, and here and there the rocky substance of the

hill, peeping just above the wood-wax.

There are few such prospects of town and village, woodland and cultivated

field, steeples and country seats, as we beheld from this unhappy spot.

No blight had fallen on old Essex; all was prosperity and riches,

healthfully distributed. Before us lay our native town, extending from

the foot of the hill to the harbor, level as a chess board, embraced by

two arms of the sea, and filling the whole peninsula with a close

assemblage of wooden roofs, overtopped by many a spire, and intermixed

with frequent heaps of verdure, where trees threw up their shade from

unseen trunks. Beyond was the bay and its islands, almost the only

objects, in a country unmarked by strong natural features, on which time

and human toil had produced no change. Retaining these portions of the

scene, and also the peaceful glory and tender gloom of the declining sun,

we threw, in imagination, a veil of deep forest over the land, and

pictured a few scattered villages, and this old town itself a village, as

when the prince of hell bore sway there. The idea thus gained of its

former aspect, its quaint edifices standing far apart, with peaked roofs

and projecting stories, and its single meeting-house pointing up a tall

spire in the midst; the vision, in short, of the town in 1692, served to

introduce a wondrous tale of those old times.

I had brought the manuscript in my pocket. It was one of a series

written years ago, when my pen, now sluggish and perhaps feeble, because

I have not munch to hope or fear, was driven by stronger external motives

and a more passionate impulse within, than I am fated to feel again.

Three or four of these tales had appeared in the “Token,” after a long

time and various adventures, but had encumbered me with no troublesome

notoriety, even in my birthplace. One great heap had met a brighter

destiny: they had fed the flames; thoughts meant to delight the world and

endure for ages had perished in a moment, and stirred not a single heart

but mine. The story now to be introduced, and another, chanced to be in

kinder custody at the time, and thus, by no conspicuous merits of their

own, escaped destruction.

The ladies, in consideration that I had never before intruded my

performances on them, by any but the legitimate medium, through the

press, consented to hear me read. I made them sit down on a moss-grown

rock, close by the spot where we chose to believe that the death tree had

stood. After a little hesitation on my part, caused by a dread of

renewing my acquaintance with fantasies that had lost their charm in the

ceaseless flux of mind, I began the tale, which opened darkly with the

discovery of a murder.

A hundred years, and nearly half that time, have elapsed since the body

of a murdered man was found, at about the distance of three miles, on the

old road to Boston. He lay in a solitary spot, on the bank of a small

lake, which the severe frost of December had covered with a sheet of ice.

Beneath this, it seemed to have been the intention of the murderer to

conceal his victim in a chill and watery grave, the ice being deeply

hacked, perhaps with the weapon that had slain him, though its solidity

was too stubborn for the patience of a man with blood upon his hand. The

corpse therefore reclined on the earth, but was separated from the road

by a thick growth of dwarf pines. There had been a slight fall of snow

during the night, and as if nature were shocked at the deed, and strove

to hide it with her frozen tears, a little drifted heap had partly buried

the body, and lay deepest over the pale dead face. An early traveller,

whose dog had led him to the spot, ventured to uncover the features, but

was affrighted by their expression. A look of evil and scornful triumph

had hardened on them, and made death so life-like and so terrible, that

the beholder at once took flight, as swiftly as if the stiffened corpse

would rise up and follow.

I read on, and identified the body as that of a young man, a stranger in

the country, but resident during several preceding months in the town

which lay at our feet. The story described, at some length, the

excitement caused by the murder, the unavailing quest after the

perpetrator, the funeral ceremonies, and other commonplace matters, in

the course of which, I brought forward the personages who were to move

among the succeeding events. They were but three. A young man and his

sister; the former characterized by a diseased imagination and morbid

feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous, and instilling something of

her own excellence into the wild heart of her brother, but not enough to

cure the deep taint of his nature. The third person was a wizard; a

small, gray, withered man, with fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and

superhuman power to execute it, but senseless as an idiot and feebler

than a child to all better purposes. The central scene of the story was

an interview between this wretch and Leonard Doane, in the wizard’s hut,

situated beneath a range of rocks at some distance from the town. They

sat beside a smouldering fire, while a tempest of wintry rain was beating

on the roof.

The young man spoke of the closeness of the tie which united him and

Alice, the consecrated fervor of their affection from childhood upwards,

their sense of lonely sufficiency to each other, because they only of

their race had escaped death, in a night attack by the Indians. He

related his discovery or suspicion of a secret sympathy between his

sister and Walter Brome, and told how a distempered jealousy had maddened

him. In the following passage, I threw a glimmering light on the mystery

of the tale.

“Searching,” continued Leonard, “into the breast of Walter Brome, I at

length found a cause why Alice must inevitably love him. For he was my

very counterpart! I compared his mind by each individual portion, and as

a whole, with mine. There was a resemblance from which I shrunk with

sickness, and loathing, and horror, as if my own features had come and

stared upon me in a solitary place, or had met me in struggling through a

crowd. Nay! the very same thoughts would often express themselves in the

same words from our lips, proving a hateful sympathy in our secret souls.

His education, indeed, in the cities of the old world, and mine in the

rude wilderness, had wrought a superficial difference. The evil of his

character, also, had been strengthened and rendered prominent by a

reckless and ungoverned life, while mine had been softened and purified

by the gentle and holy nature of Alice. But my soul had been conscious

of the germ of all the fierce and deep passions, and of all the many

varieties of wickedness, which accident had brought to their full

maturity in him. Nor will I deny that, in the accursed one, I could see

the withered blossom of every virtue, which, by a happier culture, had

been made to bring forth fruit in me. Now, here was a man whom Alice

might love with all the strength of sisterly affection, added to that

impure passion which alone engrosses all the heart. The stranger would

have more than the love which had been gathered to me from the many

graves of our household--and I be desolate!”

Leonard Doane went on to describe the insane hatred that had kindled his

heart into a volume of hellish flame. It appeared, indeed, that his

jealousy had grounds, so far as that Walter Brome had actually sought the

love of Alice, who also had betrayed an undefinable, but powerful

interest in the unknown youth. The latter, in spite of his passion for

Alice, seemed to return the loathful antipathy of her brother; the

similarity of their dispositions made them like joint possessors of an

individual nature, which could not become wholly the property of one,

unless by the extinction of the other. At last, with the sane devil in

each bosom, they chanced to meet, they two, on a lonely road. While

Leonard spoke, the wizard had sat listening to what he already knew, yet

with tokens of pleasurable interest, manifested by flashes of expression

across his vacant features, by grisly smiles, and by a word here and

there, mysteriously filling up some void in the narrative. But when the

young man told how Walter Brome had taunted him with indubitable proofs

of the shame of Alice, and, before the triumphant sneer could vanish from

his face, had died by her brother’s hand, the wizard laughed aloud.

Leonard started, but just then a gust of wind came down the chimney,

forming itself into a close resemblance of the slow, unvaried laughter,

by which he had been interrupted. “I was deceived,” thought he; and thus

pursued his fearful story.

“I trod out his accursed soul, and knew that he was dead; for my spirit

bounded as if a chain had fallen from it and left me free. But the burst

of exulting certainty soon fled, and was succeeded by a torpor over my

brain and a dimness before my eyes, with the sensation of one who

struggles through a dream. So I bent down over the body of Walter Brome,

gazing into his face, and striving to make my soul glad with the thought,

that he, in very truth, lay dead before me. I know not what space of

time I had thus stood, nor how the vision came. But it seemed to me that

the irrevocable years since childhood had rolled back, and a scene, that

had long been confused and broken in my memory, arrayed itself with all

its first distinctness. Methought I stood a weeping infant by my

father’s hearth; by the cold and blood-stained hearth where he lay dead.

I heard the childish wail of Alice, and my own cry arose with hers, as we

beheld the features of our parent, fierce with the strife and distorted

with the pain, in which his spirit had passed away. As I gazed, a cold

wind whistled by, and waved my father’s hair. Immediately I stood again

in the lonesome road, no more a sinless child, but a man of blood, whose

tears were falling fast over the face of his dead enemy. But the

delusion was not wholly gone; that face still wore a likeness of my

father; and because my soul shrank from the fixed glare of the eyes, I

bore the body to the lake, and would have buried it there. But before

his icy sepulchre was hewn, I heard the voices of two travellers and

fled.”

Such was the dreadful confession of Leonard Doane. And now tortured by

the idea of his sister’s guilt, yet sometimes yielding to a conviction of

her purity; stung with remorse for the death of Walter Brome, and

shuddering with a deeper sense of some unutterable crime, perpetrated, as

he imagined, in madness or a dream; moved also by dark impulses, as if a

fiend were whispering him to meditate violence against the life of Alice;

he had sought this interview with the wizard, who, on certain conditions,

had no power to withhold his aid in unravelling the mystery. The tale

drew near its close.

The moon was bright on high; the blue firmament appeared to glow with an

inherent brightness; the greater stars were burning in their spheres; the

northern lights threw their mysterious glare far over the horizon; the

few small clouds aloft were burdened with radiance; but the sky, with all

its variety of light, was scarcely so brilliant as the earth. The rain

of the preceding night had frozen as it fell, and, by that simple magic,

had wrought wonders. The trees were hung with diamonds and many-colored

gems; the houses were overlaid with silver, and the streets paved with

slippery brightness; a frigid glory was flung over all familiar things,

from the cottage chimney to the steeple of the meeting-house, that

gleamed upward to the sky. This living world, where we sit by our

firesides, or go forth to meet beings like ourselves, seemed rather the

creation of wizard power, with so much of resemblance to known objects

that a man might shudder at the ghostly shape of his old beloved

dwelling, and the shadow of a ghostly tree before his door. One looked

to behold inhabitants suited to such a town, glittering in icy garments,

with motionless features, cold, sparkling eyes, and just sensation enough

in their frozen hearts to shiver at each other’s presence.

By this fantastic piece of description, and more in the same style, I

intended to throw a ghostly glimmer round the reader, so that his

imagination might view the town through a medium that should take off its

every-day aspect, and make it a proper theatre for so wild a scene as the

final one. Amid this unearthly show, the wretched brother and sister

were represented as setting forth, at midnight, through the gleaming

streets, and directing their steps to a graveyard, where all the dead had

been laid from the first corpse in that ancient town, to the murdered man

who was buried three days before. As they went, they seemed to see the

wizard gliding by their sides, or walking dimly on the path before them.

But here I paused, and gazed into the faces of my two fair auditors, to

judge whether, even on the hill where so many had been brought to death

by wilder tales than this, I might venture to proceed. Their bright eyes

were fixed on me; their lips apart. I took courage, and led the fated

pair to a new made grave, where for a few moments, in the bright and

silent midnight, they stood alone. But suddenly there was a multitude of

people among the graves.

Each family tomb had given up its inhabitants, who, one by one, through

distant years, had been borne to its dark chamber, but now came forth and

stood in a pale group together. There was the gray ancestor, the aged

mother, and all their descendants, some withered and full of years, like

themselves, and others in their prime; there, too, were the children who

went prattling to the tomb, and there the maiden who yielded her early

beauty to death’s embrace, before passion had polluted it. Husbands and

wives arose, who had lain many years side by side, and young mothers who

had forgotten to kiss their first babes, though pillowed so long on their

bosoms. Many had been buried in the habiliments of life, and still wore

their ancient garb; some were old defenders of the infant colony, and

gleamed forth in their steel-caps and bright breastplates, as if starting

up at an Indian war-cry; other venerable shapes had been pastors of the

church, famous among the New England clergy, and now leaned with hands

clasped over their gravestones, ready to call the congregation to prayer.

There stood the early settlers, those old illustrious ones, the heroes of

tradition and fireside legends, the men of history whose features had

been so long beneath the sod that few alive could have remembered them.

There, too, were faces of former townspeople, dimly recollected from

childhood, and others, whom Leonard and Alice had wept in later years,

but who now were most terrible of all, by their ghastly smile of

recognition. All, in short, were there; the dead of other generations,

whose moss-grown names could scarce be read upon their tombstones, and

their successors, whose graves were not yet green; all whom black

funerals had followed slowly thither now reappeared where the mourners

left them. Yet none but souls accursed were there, and fiends

counterfeiting the likeness of departed saints.

The countenances of those venerable men, whose very features had been

hallowed by lives of piety, were contorted now by intolerable pain or

hellish passion, and now by an unearthly and derisive merriment. Had the

pastors prayed, all saintlike as they seemed, it had been blasphemy. The

chaste matrons, too, and the maidens with untasted lips, who had slept in

their virgin graves apart from all other dust, now wore a look from which

the two trembling mortals shrank, as if the unimaginable sin of twenty

worlds were collected there. The faces of fond lovers, even of such as

had pined into the tomb, because there their treasure was, were bent on

one another with glances of hatred and smiles of bitter scorn, passions

that are to devils what love is to the blest. At times, the features of

those who had passed from a holy life to heaven would vary to and fro,

between their assumed aspect and the fiendish lineaments whence they had

been transformed. The whole miserable multitude, both sinful souls and

false spectres of good men, groaned horribly and gnashed their teeth, as

they looked upward to the calm loveliness of the midnight sky, and beheld

those homes of bliss where they must never dwell. Such was the

apparition, though too shadowy for language to portray; for here would be

the moonbeams on the ice, glittering through a warrior’s breastplate, and

there the letters of a tombstone, on the form that stood before it; and

whenever a breeze went by, it swept the old men’s hoary heads, the

women’s fearful beauty, and all the unreal throng, into one

indistinguishable cloud together.

I dare not give the remainder of the scene, except in a very brief

epitome. This company of devils and condemned souls had come on a

holiday, to revel in the discovery of a complicated crime; as foul a one

as ever was imagined in their dreadful abode. In the course of the tale,

the reader had been permitted to discover that all the incidents were

results of the machinations of the wizard, who had cunningly devised that

Walter Brome should tempt his unknown sister to guilt and shame, and

himself perish by the hand of his twin-brother. I described the glee of

the fiends at this hideous conception, and their eagerness to know if it

were consummated. The story concluded with the Appeal of Alice to the

spectre of Walter Brome; his reply, absolving her from every stain; and

the trembling awe with which ghost and devil fled as from the sinless

presence of an angel.

The sun had gone down. While I held my page of wonders in the fading

light, and read how Alice and her brother were left alone among the

graves, my voice mingled with the sigh of a summer wind, which passed

over the hill-top, with the broad and hollow sound as of the flight of

unseen spirits. Not a word was spoken till I added that the wizard’s

grave was close beside us, and that the wood-wax had sprouted originally

from his unhallowed bones. The ladies started; perhaps their cheeks

might have grown pale had not the crimson west been blushing on them; but

after a moment they began to laugh, while the breeze took a livelier

motion, as if responsive to their mirth. I kept an awful solemnity of

visage, being, indeed, a little piqued that a narrative which had good

authority in our ancient superstitions, and would have brought even a

church deacon to Gallows Hill, in old witch times, should now be

considered too grotesque and extravagant for timid maids to tremble at.

Though it was past supper time, I detained them a while longer on the

hill, and made a trial whether truth were more powerful than fiction.

We looked again towards the town, no longer arrayed in that icy splendor

of earth, tree, and edifice, beneath the glow of a wintry midnight, which

shining afar through the gloom of a century had made it appear the very

home of visions in visionary streets. An indistinctness had begun to

creep over the mass of buildings and blend them with the intermingled

tree-tops, except where the roof of a statelier mansion, and the steeples

and brick towers of churches, caught the brightness of some cloud that

yet floated in the sunshine. Twilight over the landscape was congenial

to the obscurity of time. With such eloquence as my share of feeling and

fancy could supply, I called back hoar antiquity, and bade my companions

imagine an ancient multitude of people, congregated on the hillside,

spreading far below, clustering on the steep old roofs, and climbing the

adjacent heights, wherever a glimpse of this spot might be obtained. I

strove to realize and faintly communicate the deep, unutterable loathing

and horror, the indignation, the affrighted wonder, that wrinkled on

every brow, and filled the universal heart. See! the whole crowd turns

pale and shrinks within itself, as the virtuous emerge from yonder

street. Keeping pace with that devoted company, I described them one by

one; here tottered a woman in her dotage, knowing neither the crime

imputed her, nor its punishment; there another, distracted by the

universal madness, till feverish dreams were remembered as realities, and

she almost believed her guilt. One, a proud man once, was so broken down

by the intolerable hatred heaped upon him, that he seemed to hasten his

steps, eager to hide himself in the grave hastily dug at the foot of the

gallows. As they went slowly on, a mother looked behind, and beheld her

peaceful dwelling; she cast her eyes elsewhere, and groaned inwardly yet

with bitterest anguish, for there was her little son among the accusers.

I watched the face of an ordained pastor, who walked onward to the same

death; his lips moved in prayer; no narrow petition for himself alone,

but embracing all his fellow-sufferers and the frenzied multitude; he

looked to Heaven and trod lightly up the hill.

Behind their victims came the afflicted, a guilty and miserable band;

villains who had thus avenged themselves on their enemies, and viler

wretches, whose cowardice had destroyed their friends; lunatics, whose

ravings had chimed in with the madness of the land; and children, who had

played a game that the imps of darkness might have envied them, since it

disgraced an age, and dipped a people’s hands in blood. In the rear of

the procession rode a figure on horseback, so darkly conspicuous, so

sternly triumphant, that my hearers mistook him for the visible presence

of the fiend himself; but it was only his good friend, Cotton Mather,

proud of his well-won dignity, as the representative of all the hateful

features of his time: the one blood-thirsty man, in whom were

concentrated those vices of spirit and errors of opinion that sufficed to

madden the whole surrounding multitude. And thus I marshalled them

onward, the innocent who were to die, and the guilty who were to grow old

in long remorse--tracing their every step, by rock, and shrub, and broken

track, till their shadowy visages had circled round the hilltop, where we

stood. I plunged into my imagination for a blacker horror, and a deeper

woe, and pictured the scaffold----

But here my companions seized an arm on each side; their nerves were

trembling; and, sweeter victory still, I had reached the seldom trodden

places of their hearts, and found the well-spring of their tears. And

now the past had done all it could. We slowly descended, watching the

lights as they twinkled gradually through the town, and listening to the

distant mirth of boys at play, and to the voice of a young girl warbling

somewhere in the dusk, a pleasant sound to wanderers from old witch

times. Yet, ere we left the hill, we could not but regret that there is

nothing on its barren summit, no relic of old, nor lettered stone of

later days, to assist the imagination in appealing to the heart. We

build the memorial column on the height which our fathers made sacred

with their blood, poured out in a holy cause. And here, in dark,

funereal stone, should rise another monument, sadly commemorative of the

errors of an earlier race, and not to be cast down while the human heart

has one infirmity that may result in crime.

THE ANCESTRAL FOOTSTEP

Outlines of an English Romance.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

“Septimius Felton” was the outgrowth of a project, formed by Hawthorne

during his residence in England, of writing a romance, the scene of which

should be laid in that country; but this project was afterwards

abandoned, giving place to a new conception in which the visionary search

for means to secure an earthly immortality was to form the principal

interest. The new conception took shape in the uncompleted “Dolliver

Romance.” The two themes, of course, were distinct, but, by a curious

process of thought, one grew directly out of the other: the whole history

constitutes, in fact, a chapter in what may be called the genealogy of a

romance. There remained, after “Septimius Felton” had been published,

certain manuscripts connected with the scheme of an English story. One

of these manuscripts was written in the form of a journalized narrative;

the author merely noting the date of what he wrote, as he went along.

The other was a more extended sketch of much greater bulk, and without

date, but probably produced several years later. It was not originally

intended by those who at the time had charge of Hawthorne’s papers that

either of these incomplete writings should be laid before the public;

because they manifestly had not been left by him in a form which he would

have considered as warranting such a course. But since the second and

larger manuscript has been published under the title of “Dr. Grimshawe’s

Secret,” it has been thought best to issue the present sketch, so that

the two documents may be examined together. Their appearance places in

the hands of readers the entire process of development leading to the

“Septimius” and “The Dolliver Romance.” They speak for themselves much

more efficiently than any commentator can expect to do; and little,

therefore, remains to be said beyond a few words of explanation in regard

to the following pages.

The Note-Books show that the plan of an English romance, turning upon the

fact that an emigrant to America had carried away a family secret which

should give his descendant the power to ruin the family in the mother

country, had occurred to Hawthorne as early as April, 1855. In August of

the same year he visited Smithell’s Hall, in Bolton le Moors, concerning

which he had already heard its legend of “The Bloody Footstep,” and from

that time on, the idea of this footprint on the threshold-stone of the

ancestral mansion seems to have associated itself inextricably with the

dreamy substance of his yet unshaped romance. Indeed, it leaves its mark

broadly upon Sibyl Dacy’s wild legend in “Septimius Felton,” and

reappears in the last paragraph of that story. But, so far as we can

know at this day, nothing definite was done until after his departure for

Italy. It was then, while staying in Rome, that he began to put upon

paper that plot which had first occupied his thoughts three years before,

in the scant leisure allowed him by his duties at the Liverpool

consulate. Of leisure there was not a great deal at Rome, either; for,

as the “French and Italian Note-Books” show, sight-seeing and social

intercourse took up a good deal of his time, and the daily record in his

journal likewise had to be kept up. But he set to work resolutely to

embody, so far as he might, his stray imaginings upon the haunting

English theme, and to give them connected form. April 1, 1858, he began;

and then nearly two weeks passed before he found an opportunity to

resume; April 13th being the date of the next passage. By May he gets

fully into swing, so that day after day, with but slight breaks, he

carries on the story, always increasing in interest for as who read as

for him who improvised. Thus it continues until May 19th, by which time

he has made a tolerably complete outline, filled in with a good deal of

detail here and there. Although the sketch is cast in the form of a

regular narrative, one or two gaps occur, indicating that the author had

thought out certain points which he then took for granted without making

note of them. Brief scenes, passages of conversation and of narration,

follow one another after the manner of a finished story, alternating with

synopses of the plot, and queries concerning particulars that needed

further study; confidences of the romancer to himself which form

certainly a valuable contribution to literary history. The manuscript

closes with a rapid sketch of the conclusion, and the way in which it is

to be executed. Succinctly, what we have is a romance in embryo; one,

moreover, that never attained to a viable stature and constitution.

During his lifetime it naturally would not have been put forward as

demanding public attention; and, in consideration of that fact, it has

since been withheld from the press by the decision of his daughter, in

whom the title to it vests. Students of literary art, however, and many

more general readers will, I think, be likely to discover in it a charm

all the greater for its being in parts only indicated; since, as it

stands, it presents the precise condition of a work of fiction in its

first stage. The unfinished “Grimshawe” was another development of the

same theme, and the “Septimius” a later sketch, with a new element

introduced. But the present experimental fragment, to which it has been

decided to give the title of “The Ancestral Footstep,” possesses a

freshness and spontaneity recalling the peculiar fascination of those

chalk or pencil outlines with which great masters in the graphic art have

been wont to arrest their fleeting glimpses of a composition still

unwrought.

It would not be safe to conclude, from the large amount of preliminary

writing done with a view to that romance, that Hawthorne always adopted

this laborious mode of making several drafts of a book. On the contrary,

it is understood that his habit was to mature a design so thoroughly in

his mind before attempting to give it actual existence on paper that but

little rewriting was needed. The circumstance that he was obliged to

write so much that did not satisfy him in this case may account partly

for his relinquishing the theme, as one which for him had lost its

seductiveness through too much recasting.

It need be added only that the original manuscript, from which the

following pages are printed through the medium of an exact copy, is

singularly clear and fluent. Not a single correction occurs throughout;

but here and there a word is omitted obviously by mere accident, and

these omissions have been supplied. The correction in each case is

marked by brackets in this printed reproduction. The sketch begins

abruptly; but there is no reason to suppose that anything preceded it

except the unrecorded musings in the author’s mind, and one or two

memoranda in the “English Note-Books.” We must therefore imagine the

central figure, Middleton, who is the American descendant of an old

English family, as having been properly introduced, and then pass at once

to the opening sentences. The rest will explain itself. G. P. L.

THE ANCESTRAL FOOTSTEP.

Outlines of an English Romance.

I.

April 1, 1858. Thursday.--He had now been travelling long in those rich

portions of England where he would most have wished to find the object of

his pursuit; and many had been the scenes which he would willingly have

identified with that mentioned in the ancient, time-yellowed record which

he bore about with him. It is to be observed that, undertaken at first

half as the amusement, the unreal object of a grown man’s play-day, it

had become more and more real to him with every step of the way that he

followed it up; along those green English lanes it seemed as if

everything would bring him close to the mansion that he sought; every

morning he went on with renewed hopes, nor did the evening, though it

brought with it no success, bring with it the gloom and heaviness of a

real disappointment. In all his life, including its earliest and

happiest days, he had never known such a spring and zest as now filled

his veins, and gave lightsomeness to his limbs; this spirit gave to the

beautiful country which he trod a still richer beauty than it had ever

borne, and he sought his ancient home as if he had found his way into

Paradise and were there endeavoring to trace out the sight [site] of

Eve’s bridal bower, the birthplace of the human race and its glorious

possibilities of happiness and high performance.

In these sweet and delightful moods of mind, varying from one dream to

another, he loved indeed the solitude of his way; but likewise he loved

the facility which his pursuit afforded him, of coming in contact with

many varieties of men, and he took advantage of this facility to an

extent which it was not usually his impulse to do. But now he came forth

from all reserves, and offered himself to whomever the chances of the way

offered to him, with a ready sensibility that made its way through every

barrier that even English exclusiveness, in whatever rank of life, could

set up. The plastic character of Middleton was perhaps a variety of

American nature only presenting itself under an individual form; he could

throw off the man of our day, and put on a ruder nature, but then it was

with a certain fineness, that made this only [a] distinction between it

and the central truth. He found less variety of form in the English

character than he had been accustomed to see at home; but perhaps this

was in consequence of the external nature of his acquaintance with it;

for the view of one well accustomed to a people, and of a stranger to

them, differs in this--that the latter sees the homogeneity, the one

universal character, the ground work of the whole, while the former sees

a thousand little differences, which distinguish the individual men apart

to such a degree that they seem hardly to have any resemblance among

themselves.

But just at the period of his journey when we take him up, Middleton had

been for two or three days the companion of an old man who interested him

more than most of his wayside companions; the more especially as he

seemed to be wandering without an object, or with such a dreamy object as

that which led Middleton’s own steps onward. He was a plain old man

enough, but with a pale, strong-featured face and white hair, a certain

picturesqueness and venerableness, which Middleton fancied might have

befitted a richer garb than he now wore. In much of their conversation,

too, he was sensible that, though the stranger betrayed no acquaintance

with literature, nor seemed to have conversed with cultivated minds, yet

the results of such acquaintance and converse were here. Middleton was

inclined to think him, however, an old man, one of those itinerants, such

as Wordsworth represented in the “Excursion,” who smooth themselves by

the attrition of the world and gain a knowledge equivalent to or better

than that of books from the actual intellect of man awake and active

around them.

Often, during the short period since their companionship originated,

Middleton had felt impelled to disclose to the old man the object of his

journey, and the wild tale by which, after two hundred years, he had been

blown as it were across the ocean, and drawn onward to commence this

search. The old man’s ordinary conversation was of a nature to draw

forth such a confidence as this; frequently turning on the traditions of

the wayside; the reminiscences that lingered on the battle-fields of the

Roses, or of the Parliament, like flowers nurtured by the blood of the

slain, and prolonging their race through the centuries for the wayfarer

to pluck them; or the family histories of the castles, manor-houses, and

seats which, of various epochs, had their park-gates along the roadside

and would be seen with dark gray towers or ancient gables, or more modern

forms of architecture, rising up among clouds of ancient oaks. Middleton

watched earnestly to see if, in any of these tales, there were

circumstances resembling those striking and singular ones which he had

borne so long in his memory, and on which he was now acting in so strange

a manner; but [though] there was a good deal of variety of incident in

them, there never was any combination of incidents having the peculiarity

of this.

“I suppose,” said he to the old man, “the settlers in my country may have

carried away with them traditions long since forgotten in this country,

but which might have an interest and connection, and might even piece out

the broken relics of family history, which have remained perhaps a

mystery for hundreds of years. I can conceive, even, that this might be

of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only

the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle,

although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two

parts could be united across the sea, like the wires of an electric

telegraph.”

“It is an impressive idea,” said the old man. “Do you know any such

tradition as you have hinted at?”

April 13th.--Middleton could not but wonder at the singular chance that

had established him in such a place, and in such society, so strangely

adapted to the purposes with which he had been wandering through England.

He had come hither, hoping as it were to find the past still alive and in

action; and here it was so in this one only spot, and these few persons

into the midst of whom he had suddenly been cast. With these reflections

he looked forth from his window into the old-fashioned garden, and at the

stone sun-dial, which had numbered all the hours--all the daylight and

serene ones, at least--since his mysterious ancestor left the country.

And [is] this, then, he thought to himself, the establishment of which

some rumor had been preserved? Was it here that the secret had its

hiding-place in the old coffer, in the cupboard, in the secret chamber,

or whatever was indicated by the apparently idle words of the document

which he had preserved? He still smiled at the idea, but it was with a

pleasant, mysterious sense that his life had at last got out of the dusty

real, and that strangeness had mixed itself up with his daily experience.

With such feelings he prepared himself to go down to dinner with his

host. He found him alone at table, which was placed in a dark old room

modernized with every English comfort and the pleasant spectacle of a

table set with the whitest of napery and the brightest of glass and

china. The friendly old gentleman, as he had found him from the first,

became doubly and trebly so in that position which brings out whatever

warmth of heart an Englishman has, and gives it to him if he has none.

The impressionable and sympathetic character of Middleton answered to the

kindness of his host; and by the time the meal was concluded, the two

were conversing with almost as much zest and friendship as if they were

similar in age, even fellow-countrymen, and had known one another all

their lifetime. Middleton’s secret, it may be supposed, came often to

the tip of his tongue; but still he kept it within, from a natural

repugnance to bring out the one romance of his life. The talk, however,

necessarily ran much upon topics among which this one would have come in

without any extra attempt to introduce it.

“This decay of old families,” said the Master, “is much greater than

would appear on the surface of things. We have such a reluctance to part

with them, that we are content to see them continued by any fiction,

through any indirections, rather than to dispense with old names. In

your country, I suppose, there is no such reluctance; you are willing

that one generation should blot out all that preceded it, and be itself

the newest and only age of the world.”

“Not quite so,” answered Middleton; “at any rate, if there be such a

feeling in the people at large, I doubt whether, even in England, those

who fancy themselves possessed of claims to birth, cherish them more as a

treasure than we do. It is, of course, a thousand times more difficult

for us to keep alive a name amid a thousand difficulties sedulously

thrown around it by our institutions, than for you to do, where your

institutions are anxiously calculated to promote the contrary purpose.

It has occasionally struck me, however, that the ancient lineage might

often be found in America, for a family which has been compelled to

prolong itself here through the female line, and through alien stocks.”

“Indeed, my young friend,” said the Master, “if that be the case, I

should like to [speak?] further with you upon it; for, I can assure you,

there are sometimes vicissitudes in old families that make me grieve to

think that a man cannot be made for the occasion.”

All this while, the young lady at table had remained almost silent; and

Middleton had only occasionally been reminded of her by the necessity of

performing some of those offices which put people at table under a

Christian necessity of recognizing one another. He was, to say the

truth, somewhat interested in her, yet not strongly attracted by the

neutral tint of her dress, and the neutral character of her manners. She

did not seem to be handsome, although, with her face full before him, he

had not quite made up his mind on this point.

April 14th.--So here was Middleton, now at length seeing indistinctly a

thread, to which the thread that he had so long held in his hand--the

hereditary thread that ancestor after ancestor had handed down--might

seem ready to join on. He felt as if they were the two points of an

electric chain, which being joined, an instantaneous effect must follow.

Earnestly, as he would have looked forward to this moment (had he in

sober reason ever put any real weight on the fantasy in pursuit of which

he had wandered so far) he now, that it actually appeared to be realizing

itself, paused with a vague sensation of alarm. The mystery was

evidently one of sorrow, if not of crime, and he felt as if that sorrow

and crime might not have been annihilated even by being buried out of

human sight and remembrance so long. He remembered to have heard or

read, how that once an old pit had been dug open, in which were found the

remains of persons that, as the shuddering by-standers traditionally

remembered, had died of an ancient pestilence; and out of that old grave

had come a new plague, that slew the far-off progeny of those who had

first died by it. Might not some fatal treasure like this, in a moral

view, be brought to light by the secret into which he had so strangely

been drawn? Such were the fantasies with which he awaited the return of

Alice, whose light footsteps sounded afar along the passages of the old

mansion; and then all was silent.

At length he heard the sound, a great way off, as he concluded, of her

returning footstep, approaching from chamber to chamber, and along the

staircases, closing the doors behind her. At first, he paid no great

attention to the character of these sounds, but as they drew nearer, he

became aware that the footstep was unlike those of Alice; indeed, as

unlike as could be, very regular, slow, yet not firm, so that it seemed

to be that of an aged person, sauntering listlessly through the rooms.

We have often alluded to Middleton’s sensitiveness, and the quick

vibrations of his sympathies; and there was something in this slow

approach that produced a strange feeling within him; so that he stood

breathlessly, looking towards the door by which these slow footsteps were

to enter. At last, there appeared in the doorway a venerable figure,

clad in a rich, faded dressing-gown, and standing on the threshold looked

fixedly at Middleton, at the same time holding up a light in his left

hand. In his right was some object that Middleton did not distinctly

see. But he knew the figure, and recognized the face. It was the old

man, his long since companion on the journey hitherward.

“So,” said the old man, smiling gravely, “you have thought fit, at last,

to accept the hospitality which I offered you so long ago. It might have

been better for both of us--for all parties--if you had accepted it

then!”

“You here!” exclaimed Middleton. “And what can be your connection with

all the error and trouble, and involuntary wrong, through which I have

wandered since our last meeting? And is it possible that you even then

held the clue which I was seeking?”

“No,--no,” replied Rothermel. “I was not conscious, at least, of so

doing. And yet had we two sat down there by the wayside, or on that

English stile, which attracted your attention so much; had we sat down

there and thrown forth each his own dream, each his own knowledge, it

would have saved much that we must now forever regret. Are you even now

ready to confide wholly in me?”

“Alas,” said Middleton, with a darkening brow, “there are many reasons,

at this moment, which did not exist then, to incline me to hold my peace.

And why has not Alice returned?--and what is your connection with her?”

“Let her answer for herself,” said Rothermel; and he called her, shouting

through the silent house as if she were at the furthest chamber, and he

were in instant need: “Alice!--Alice!--Alice!--here is one who would know

what is the link between a maiden and her father!”

Amid the strange uproar which he made Alice came flying back, not in

alarm but only in haste, and put her hand within his own. “Hush,

father,” said she. “It is not time.”

Here is an abstract of the plot of this story. The Middleton who

emigrated to America, more than two hundred years ago, had been a dark

and moody man; he came with a beautiful though not young woman for his

wife, and left a family behind him. In this family a certain heirloom

had been preserved, and with it a tradition that grew wilder and stranger

with the passing generations. The tradition had lost, if it ever had,

some of its connecting links; but it referred to a murder, to the

expulsion of a brother from the hereditary house, in some strange way,

and to a Bloody Footstep which he had left impressed into the threshold,

as he turned about to make a last remonstrance. It was rumored, however,

or vaguely understood, that the expelled brother was not altogether an

innocent man; but that there had been wrong done as well as crime

committed, insomuch that his reasons were strong that led him,

subsequently, to imbibe the most gloomy religious views, and to bury

himself in the Western wilderness. These reasons he had never fully

imparted to his family; but had necessarily made allusions to them, which

had been treasured up and doubtless enlarged upon. At last, one

descendant of the family determines to go to England, with the purpose of

searching out whatever ground there may be for these traditions, carrying

with him certain ancient documents, and other relics; and goes about the

country, half in earnest, and half in sport of fancy, in quest of the old

family mansion. He makes singular discoveries, all of which bring the

book to an end unexpected by everybody, and not satisfactory to the

natural yearnings of novel readers. In the traditions that he brought

over, there was a key to some family secrets that were still unsolved,

and that controlled the descent of estates and titles. His influence

upon these matters involves [him] in divers strange and perilous

adventures; and at last it turns out that he himself is the rightful heir

to the titles and estate, that had passed into another name within the

last half-century. But he respects both, feeling that it is better to

make a virgin soil than to try to make the old name grow in a soil that

had been darkened with so much blood and misfortune as this.

April 27th, Tuesday.--It was with a delightful feeling of release from

ordinary rules, that Middleton found himself brought into this connection

with Alice; and he only hoped that this play-day of his life might last

long enough to rest him from all that he had suffered. In the enjoyment

of his position he almost forgot the pursuit that occupied him, nor might

he have remembered for a long space if, one evening, Alice herself had

not alluded to it. “You are wasting precious days,” she suddenly said.

“Why do you not renew your quest?”

“To what do you allude?” said Middleton in surprise. “What object do you

suppose me to have?”

Alice smiled; nay, laughed outright. “You suppose yourself to be a

perfect mystery, no doubt,” she replied. “But do not I know you--have

not I known you long--as the holder of the talisman, the owner of the

mysterious cabinet that contains the blood-stained secret?”

“Nay, Alice, this is certainly a strange coincidence, that you should

know even thus much of a foolish secret that makes me employ this little

holiday time, which I have stolen out of a weary life, in a wild-goose

chase. But, believe me, you allude to matters that are more a mystery to

me than my affairs appear to be to you. Will you explain what you would

suggest by this badinage?”

Alice shook her head. “You have no claim to know what I know, even if it

would be any addition to your own knowledge. I shall not, and must not

enlighten you. You must burrow for the secret with your own tools, in

your own manner, and in a place of your own choosing. I am bound not to

assist you.”

“Alice, this is wilful, wayward, unjust,” cried Middleton, with a flushed

cheek. “I have not told you--yet you know well--the deep and real

importance which this subject has for me. We have been together as

friends, yet, the instant when there comes up an occasion when the

slightest friendly feeling would induce you to do me a good office, you

assume this altered tone.”

“My tone is not in the least altered in respect to you,” said Alice.

“All along, as you know, I have reserved myself on this very point; it

being, I candidly tell you, impossible for me to act in your interest in

the matter alluded to. If you choose to consider this unfriendly, as

being less than the terms on which you conceive us to have stood give you

a right to demand of me--you must resent it as you please. I shall not

the less retain for you the regard due to one who has certainly

befriended me in very untoward circumstances.”

This conversation confirmed the previous idea of Middleton, that some

mystery of a peculiarly dark and evil character was connected with the

family secret with which he was himself entangled; but it perplexed him

to imagine in what way this, after the lapse of so many years, should

continue to be a matter of real importance at the present day. All the

actors in the original guilt--if guilt it were--must have been long ago

in their graves; some in the churchyard of the village, with those

moss-grown letters embossing their names; some in the church itself, with

mural tablets recording their names over the family-pew, and one, it

might be, far over the sea, where his grave was first made under the

forest leaves, though now a city had grown up around it. Yet here was

he, the remote descendant of that family, setting his foot at last in the

country, and as secretly as might be; and all at once his mere presence

seemed to revive the buried secret, almost to awake the dead who partook

of that secret and had acted it. There was a vibration from the other

world, continued and prolonged into this, the instant that he stepped

upon the mysterious and haunted ground.

He knew not in what way to proceed. He could not but feel that there was

something not exactly within the limits of propriety in being here,

disguised--at least, not known in his true character--prying into the

secrets of a proud and secluded Englishman. But then, as he said to

himself on his own side of the question, the secret belonged to himself

by exactly as ancient a tenure and by precisely as strong a claim, as to

the Englishman. His rights here were just as powerful and well-founded

as those of his ancestor had been, nearly three centuries ago; and here

the same feeling came over him that he was that very personage, returned

after all these ages, to see if his foot would fit this bloody footstep

left of old upon the threshold. The result of all his cogitation was, as

the reader will have foreseen, that he decided to continue his

researches, and, his proceedings being pretty defensible, let the result

take care of itself.

For this purpose he went next day to the hospital, and ringing at the

Master’s door, was ushered into the old-fashioned, comfortable library,

where he had spent that well-remembered evening which threw the first ray

of light on the pursuit that now seemed developing into such strange and

unexpected consequences. Being admitted, he was desired by the domestic

to wait, as his Reverence was at that moment engaged with a gentleman on

business. Glancing through the ivy that mantled over the window,

Middleton saw that this interview was taking place in the garden, where

the Master and his visitor were walking to and fro in the avenue of box,

discussing some matter, as it seemed to him, with considerable

earnestness on both sides. He observed, too, that there was warmth,

passion, a disturbed feeling on the stranger’s part; while, on that of

the Master, it was a calm, serious, earnest representation of whatever

view he was endeavoring to impress on the other. At last, the interview

appeared to come toward a climax, the Master addressing some words to his

guest, still with undisturbed calmness, to which the latter replied by a

violent and even fierce gesture, as it should seem of menace, not towards

the Master, but some unknown party; and then hastily turning, he left the

garden and was soon heard riding away. The Master looked after him

awhile, and then, shaking his white head, returned into the house and

soon entered the parlor.

He looked somewhat surprised, and, as it struck Middleton, a little

startled, at finding him there; yet he welcomed him with all his former

cordiality--indeed, with a friendship that thoroughly warmed Middleton’s

heart even to its coldest corner.

“This is strange!” said the old gentleman. “Do you remember our

conversation on that evening when I first had the unlooked-for pleasure

of receiving you as a guest into my house? At that time I spoke to you

of a strange family story, of which there was no denouement, such as a

novel-writer would desire, and which had remained in that unfinished

posture for more than two hundred years! Well; perhaps it will gratify

you to know that there seems a prospect of that wanting termination being

supplied!”

“Indeed!” said Middleton.

“Yes,” replied the Master. “A gentleman has just parted with me who was

indeed the representative of the family concerned in the story. He is

the descendant of a younger son of that family, to whom the estate

devolved about a century ago, although at that time there was search for

the heirs of the elder son, who had disappeared after the bloody incident

which I related to you. Now, singular as it may appear, at this late

day, a person claiming to be the descendant and heir of that eldest son

has appeared, and if I may credit my friend’s account, is disposed not

only to claim the estate, but the dormant title which Eldredge himself

has been so long preparing to claim for himself. Singularly enough, too,

the heir is an American.”

May 2d, Sunday.--“I believe,” said Middleton, “that many English secrets

might find their solution in America, if the two threads of a story could

be brought together, disjoined as they have been by time and the ocean.

But are you at liberty to tell me the nature of the incidents to which

you allude?”

“I do not see any reason to the contrary,” answered the Master; “for the

story has already come in an imperfect way before the public, and the

full and authentic particulars are likely soon to follow. It seems that

the younger brother was ejected from the house on account of a love

affair; the elder having married a young woman with whom the younger was

in love, and, it is said, the wife disappeared on the bridal night, and

was never heard of more. The elder brother remained single during the

rest of his life; and dying childless, and there being still no news of

the second brother, the inheritance and representation of the family

devolved upon the third brother and his posterity. This branch of the

family has ever since remained in possession; and latterly the

representation has become of more importance, on account of a claim to an

old title, which, by the failure of another branch of this ancient

family, has devolved upon the branch here settled. Now, just at this

juncture, comes another heir from America, pretending that he is the

descendant of a marriage between the second son, supposed to have been

murdered on the threshold of the manor-house, and the missing bride! Is

it not a singular story?”

“It would seem to require very strong evidence to prove it,” said

Middleton. “And methinks a Republican should care little for the title,

however he might value the estate.”

“Both--both,” said the Master, smiling, “would be equally attractive to

your countryman. But there are further curious particulars in connection

with this claim. You must know, they are a family of singular

characteristics, humorists, sometimes developing their queer traits into

something like insanity; though oftener, I must say, spending stupid

hereditary lives here on their estates, rusting out and dying without

leaving any biography whatever about them. And yet there has always been

one very queer thing about this generally very commonplace family. It is

that each father, on his death-bed, has had an interview with his son, at

which he has imparted some secret that has evidently had an influence on

the character and after life of the son, making him ever after a

discontented man, aspiring for something he has never been able to find.

Now the American, I am told, pretends that he has the clue which has

always been needed to make the secret available; the key whereby the lock

may be opened; the something that the lost son of the family carried away

with him, and by which through these centuries he has impeded the

progress of the race. And, wild as the story seems, he does certainly

seem to bring something that looks very like the proof of what he says.”

“And what are those proofs?” inquired Middleton, wonder-stricken at the

strange reduplication of his own position and pursuits.

“In the first place,” said the Master, “the English marriage-certificate

by a clergyman of that day in London, after publication of the banns,

with a reference to the register of the parish church where the marriage

is recorded. Then, a certified genealogy of the family in New England,

where such matters can be ascertained from town and church records, with

at least as much certainty, it would appear, as in this country. He has

likewise a manuscript in his ancestor’s autograph, containing a brief

account of the events which banished him from his own country; the

circumstances which favored the idea that he had been slain, and which he

himself was willing should be received as a belief; the fortune that led

him to America, where he wished to found a new race wholly disconnected

with the past; and this manuscript he sealed up, with directions that it

should not be opened till two hundred years after his death, by which

time, as it was probable to conjecture, it would matter little to any

mortal whether the story was told or not. A whole generation has passed

since the time when the paper was at last unsealed and read, so long it

had no operation; yet now, at last, here comes the American, to disturb

the succession of an ancient family!”

“There is something very strange in all this,” said Middleton.

And indeed there was something stranger in his view of the matter than he

had yet communicated to the Master. For, taking into consideration the

relation in which he found himself with the present recognized

representative of the family, the thought struck him that his coming

hither had dug up, as it were, a buried secret that immediately assumed

life and activity the moment that it was above ground again. For seven

generations the family had vegetated in the quietude of English country

gentility, doing nothing to make itself known, passing from the cradle to

the tomb amid the same old woods that had waved over it before his

ancestor had impressed the bloody footstep; and yet the instant that he

came back, an influence seemed to be at work that was likely to renew the

old history of the family. He questioned with himself whether it were

not better to leave all as it was; to withdraw himself into the secrecy

from which he had but half emerged, and leave the family to keep on, to

the end of time perhaps, in its rusty innocence, rather than to interfere

with his wild American character to disturb it. The smell of that dark

crime--that brotherly hatred and attempted murder--seemed to breathe out

of the ground as he dug it up. Was it not better that it should remain

forever buried, for what to him was this old English title--what this

estate, so far from his own native land, located amidst feelings and

manners which would never be his own? It was late, to be sure--yet not

too late for him to turn back: the vibration, the fear, which his

footsteps had caused, would subside into peace! Meditating in this way,

he took a hasty leave of the kind old Master, promising to see him again

at an early opportunity. By chance, or however it was, his footsteps

turned to the woods of ------ Chace, and there he wandered through its

glades, deep in thought, yet always with a strange sense that he was

treading on the soil where his ancestors had trodden, and where he

himself had best right of all men to be. It was just in this state of

feeling that he found his course arrested by a hand upon his shoulder.

“What business have you here?” was the question sounded in his ear; and,

starting, he found himself in the grasp, as his blood tingled to know, of

a gentleman in a shooting-dress, who looked at him with a wrathful brow.

“Are you a poacher, or what?”

Be the case what it might, Middleton’s blood boiled at the grasp of that

hand, as it never before had done in the coarse of his impulsive life.

He shook himself free, and stood fiercely before his antagonist,

confronting him, with his uplifted stick, while the other, likewise,

appeared to be shaken by a strange wrath.

“Fellow,” muttered he--“Yankee blackguard!--imposter--take yourself off

these grounds. Quick, or it will be the worse for you!”

Middleton restrained himself. “Mr. Eldredge,” said he, “for I believe I

speak to the man who calls himself owner of this land on which we stand,

--Mr. Eldredge, you are acting under a strange misapprehension of my

character. I have come hither with no sinister purpose, and am entitled,

at the hands of a gentleman, to the consideration of an honorable

antagonist, even if you deem me one at all. And perhaps, if you think

upon the blue chamber and the ebony cabinet, and the secret connected.

with it,”--

“Villain, no more!” said Eldredge; and utterly mad with rage, he

presented his gun at Middleton; but even at the moment of doing so, he

partly restrained himself, so far as, instead of shooting him, to raise

the butt of his gun, and strike a blow at him. It came down heavily on

Middleton’s shoulder, though aimed at his head; and the blow was terribly

avenged, even by itself, for the jar caused the hammer to come down; the

gun went off, sending the bullet downwards through the heart of the

unfortunate man, who fell dead upon the ground. Eldredge [Evidently a

slip of the pen; Middleton being intended.] stood stupefied, looking at

the catastrophe which had so suddenly occurred.

May 3d, Monday.--So here was the secret suddenly made safe in this so

terrible way; its keepers reduced from two parties to one interest; the

other who alone knew of this age-long mystery and trouble now carrying it

into eternity, where a long line of those who partook of the knowledge,

in each successive generation, might now be waiting to inquire of him how

he had held his trust. He had kept it well, there was no doubt of it;

for there he lay dead upon the ground, having betrayed it to no one,

though by a method which none could have foreseen, the whole had come

into the possession of him who had brought hither but half of it.

Middleton looked down in horror upon the form that had just been so full

of life and wrathful vigor--and now lay so quietly. Being wholly

unconscious of any purpose to bring about the catastrophe, it had not at

first struck him that his own position was in any manner affected by the

violent death, under such circumstances, of the unfortunate man. But now

it suddenly occurred to him, that there had been a train of incidents all

calculated to make him the object of suspicion; and he felt that he could

not, under the English administration of law, be suffered to go at large

without rendering a strict account of himself and his relations with the

deceased. He might, indeed, fly; he might still remain in the vicinity,

and possibly escape notice. But was not the risk too great? Was it just

even to be aware of this event, and not relate fully the manner of it,

lest a suspicion of blood-guiltiness should rest upon some innocent head?

But while he was thus cogitating, he heard footsteps approaching along

the wood-path; and half-impulsively, half on purpose, he stept aside into

the shrubbery, but still where he could see the dead body, and what

passed near it.

The footsteps came on, and at the turning of the path, just where

Middleton had met Eldredge, the new-comer appeared in sight. It was

Hoper, in his usual dress of velveteen, looking now seedy,

poverty-stricken, and altogether in ill-case, trudging moodily along,

with his hat pulled over his brows, so that he did not see the ghastly

object before him till his foot absolutely trod upon the dead man’s hand.

Being thus made aware of the proximity of the corpse, he started back a

little, yet evincing such small emotion as did credit to his English

reserve; then uttering a low exclamation,--cautiously low, indeed,--he

stood looking at the corpse a moment or two, apparently in deep

meditation. He then drew near, bent down, and without evincing any

horror at the touch of death in this horrid shape, he opened the dead

man’s vest, inspected the wound, satisfied himself that life was extinct,

and then nodded his head and smiled gravely. He next proceeded to

examine seriatim the dead man’s pockets, turning each of them inside out

and taking the contents, where they appeared adapted to his needs: for

instance, a silken purse, through the interstices of which some gold was

visible; a watch, which however had been injured by the explosion, and

had stopt just at the moment--twenty-one minutes past five--when the

catastrophe took place. Hoper ascertained, by putting the watch to his

ear, that this was the case; then pocketing it, he continued his

researches. He likewise secured a note-book, on examining which he found

several bank-notes, and some other papers. And having done this, the

thief stood considering what to do next; nothing better occurring to him,

he thrust the pockets back, gave the corpse as nearly as he could the

same appearance that it had worn before he found it, and hastened away,

leaving the horror there on the wood-path.

He had been gone only a few minutes when another step, a light woman’s

step, [was heard] coming along the pathway, and Alice appeared, having on

her usual white mantle, straying along with that fearlessness which

characterized her so strangely, and made her seem like one of the

denizens of nature. She was singing in a low tone some one of those airs

which have become so popular in England, as negro melodies; when

suddenly, looking before her, she saw the blood-stained body on the

grass, the face looking ghastly upward. Alice pressed her hand upon her

heart; it was not her habit to scream, not the habit of that strong,

wild, self-dependent nature; and the exclamation which broke from her was

not for help, but the voice of her heart crying out to herself. For an

instant she hesitated, as [if] not knowing what to do; then approached,

and with her white, maiden hand felt the brow of the dead man,

tremblingly, but yet firm, and satisfied herself that life had wholly

departed. She pressed her hand, that had just touched the dead man’s, on

her forehead, and gave a moment to thought.

What her decision might have been, we cannot say, for while she stood in

this attitude, Middleton stept from his seclusion, and at the noise of

his approach she turned suddenly round, looking more frightened and

agitated than at the moment when she had first seen the dead body. She

faced Middleton, however, and looked him quietly in the eye. “You see

this!” said she, gazing fixedly at him. “It is not at this moment that

you first discover it.”

“No,” said Middleton, frankly. “It is not. I was present at the

catastrophe. In one sense, indeed, I was the cause of it; but, Alice, I

need not tell you that I am no murderer.”

“A murderer?--no,” said Alice, still looking at him with the same fixed

gaze. “But you and this man were at deadly variance. He would have

rejoiced at any chance that would have laid you cold and bloody on the

earth, as he is now; nay, he would most eagerly have seized on any

fair-looking pretext that would have given him a chance to stretch you

there. The world will scarcely believe, when it knows all about your

relations with him, that his blood is not on your hand. Indeed,” said

she, with a strange smile, “I see some of it there now!”

And, in very truth, so there was; a broad blood-stain that had dried on

Middleton’s hand. He shuddered at it, but essayed vainly to rub it off.

“You see,” said she. “It was foreordained that you should shed this

man’s blood; foreordained that, by digging into that old pit of

pestilence, you should set the contagion loose again. You should have

left it buried forever. But now what do you mean to do?”

“To proclaim this catastrophe,” replied Middleton. “It is the only

honest and manly way. What else can I do?”

“You can and ought to leave him on the wood-path, where he has fallen,”

said Alice, “and go yourself to take advantage of the state of things

which Providence has brought about. Enter the old house, the hereditary

house, where--now, at least--you alone have a right to tread. Now is the

hour. All is within your grasp. Let the wrong of three hundred years be

righted, and come back thus to your own, to these hereditary fields, this

quiet, long-descended home; to title, to honor.”

Yet as the wild maiden spoke thus, there was a sort of mockery in her

eyes; on her brow; gleaming through all her face, as if she scorned what

she thus pressed upon him, the spoils of the dead man who lay at their

feet. Middleton, with his susceptibility, could not [but] be sensible of

a wild and strange charm, as well as horror, in the situation; it seemed

such a wonder that here, in formal, orderly, well-governed England, so

wild a scene as this should have occurred; that they too [two?] should

stand here, deciding on the descent of an estate, and the inheritance of

a title, holding a court of their own.

“Come, then,” said he, at length. “Let us leave this poor fallen

antagonist in his blood, and go whither you will lead me. I will judge

for myself. At all events, I will not leave my hereditary home without

knowing what my power is.”

“Come,” responded Alice; and she turned back; but then returned and threw

a handkerchief over the dead man’s face, which while they spoke had

assumed that quiet, ecstatic expression of joy which often is observed to

overspread the faces of those who die of gunshot wounds, however fierce

the passion in which their spirits took their flight. With this strange,

grand, awful joy did the dead man gaze upward into the very eyes and

hearts, as it were, of the two that now bent over him. They looked at

one another.

“Whence comes this expression?” said Middleton, thoughtfully. “Alice,

methinks he is reconciled to us now; and that we are members of one

reconciled family, all of whom are in heaven but me.”

Tuesday, May 4th.--“How strange is this whole situation between you and

me,” said Middleton, as they went up the winding pathway that led towards

the house. “Shall I ever understand it? Do you mean ever to explain it

to me? That I should find you here with that old man [The allusion here

is apparently to the old man who proclaims himself Alice’s father, in the

portion dated April 14th. He figures hereafter as the old Hospitaller,

Hammond. The reader must not take this present passage as referring to

the death of Eldredge, which has just taken place in he preceding

section. The author is now beginning to elaborate the relation of

Middleton and Alice. As will be seen, farther on, the death of Eldredge

is ignored and abandoned; Eldredge is revived, and the story proceeds in

another way.--G. P. L.], so mysterious, apparently so poor, yet so

powerful! What [is] his relation to you?”

“A close one,” replied Alice sadly. “He was my father!”

“Your father!” repeated Middleton, starting back. “It does but heighten

the wonder! Your father! And yet, by all the tokens that birth and

breeding, and habits of thought and native character can show, you are my

countrywoman. That wild, free spirit was never born in the breast of an

Englishwoman; that slight frame, that slender beauty, that frail

envelopment of a quick, piercing, yet stubborn and patient spirit,--are

those the properties of an English maiden?”

“Perhaps not,” replied Alice quietly. “I am your countrywoman. My

father was an American, and one of whom you have heard--and no good,

alas!--for many a year.”

“And who then was he?” asked Middleton.

“I know not whether you will hate me for telling you,” replied Alice,

looking him sadly though firmly in the face. “There was a man--long

years since, in your childhood--whose plotting brain proved the ruin of

himself and many another; a man whose great designs made him a sort of

potentate, whose schemes became of national importance, and produced

results even upon the history of the country in which he acted. That man

was my father; a man who sought to do great things, and, like many who

have had similar aims, disregarded many small rights, strode over them,

on his way to effect a gigantic purpose. Among other men, your father

was trampled under foot, ruined, done to death, even, by the effects of

his ambition.”

“How is it possible!” exclaimed Middleton. “Was it Wentworth?”

“Even so,” said Alice, still with the same sad calmness and not

withdrawing her steady eyes from his face. “After his ruin; after the

catastrophe that overwhelmed him and hundreds more, he took to flight;

guilty, perhaps, but guilty as a fallen conqueror is; guilty to such an

extent that he ceased to be a cheat, as a conqueror ceases to be a

murderer. He came to England. My father had an original nobility of

nature; and his life had not been such as to debase it, but rather such

as to cherish and heighten that self-esteem which at least keeps the

possessor of it from many meaner vices. He took nothing with him;

nothing beyond the bare means of flight, with the world before him,

although thousands of gold would not have been missed out of the

scattered fragments of ruin that lay around him. He found his way

hither, led, as you were, by a desire to reconnect himself with the place

whence his family had originated; for he, too, was of a race which had

something to do with the ancient story which has now been brought to a

close. Arrived here, there were circumstances that chanced to make his

talents and habits of business available to this Mr. Eldredge, a man

ignorant and indolent, unknowing how to make the best of the property

that was in his hands. By degrees, he took the estate into his

management, acquiring necessarily a preponderating influence over such a

man.”

“And you,” said Middleton. “Have you been all along in England? For you

must have been little more than an infant at the time.”

“A mere infant,” said Alice, “and I remained in our own country under the

care of a relative who left me much to my own keeping; much to the

influences of that wild culture which the freedom of our country gives to

its youth. It is only two years that I have been in England.”

“This, then,” said Middleton thoughtfully, “accounts for much that has

seemed so strange in the events through which we have passed; for the

knowledge of my identity and my half-defined purpose which has always

glided before me, and thrown so many strange shapes of difficulty in my

path. But whence,--whence came that malevolence which your father’s

conduct has so unmistakably shown? I had done him no injury, though I

had suffered much.”

“I have often thought,” replied Alice, “that my father, though retaining

a preternatural strength and acuteness of intellect, was really not

altogether sane. And, besides, he had made it his business to keep this

estate, and all the complicated advantages of the representation of this

old family, secure to the person who was deemed to have inherited them.

A succession of ages and generations might be supposed to have blotted

out your claims from existence; for it is not just that there should be

no term of time which can make security for lack of fact and a few

formalities. At all events, he had satisfied himself that his duty was

to act as he has done.”

“Be it so! I do not seek to throw blame on him,” said Middleton.

“Besides, Alice, he was your father!”

“Yes,” said she, sadly smiling; “let him [have] what protection that

thought may give him, even though I lose what he may gain. And now here

we are at the house. At last, come in! It is your own; there is none

that can longer forbid you!”

They entered the door of the old mansion, now a farm-house, and there

were its old hall, its old chambers, all before them. They ascended the

staircase, and stood on the landing-place above; while Middleton had

again that feeling that had so often made him dizzy,--that sense of being

in one dream and recognizing the scenery and events of a former dream.

So overpowering was this feeling, that he laid his hand on the slender

arm of Alice, to steady himself; and she comprehended the emotion that

agitated him, and looked into his eyes with a tender sympathy, which she

had never before permitted to be visible,--perhaps never before felt. He

steadied himself and followed her till they had entered an ancient

chamber, but one that was finished with all the comfortable luxury

customary to be seen in English homes.

“Whither have you led me now?” inquired Middleton.

“Look round,” said Alice. “Is there nothing here that you ought to

recognize?--nothing that you kept the memory of, long ago?”

He looked around the room again and again, and at last, in a somewhat

shadowy corner, he espied an old cabinet made of ebony and inlaid with

pearl; one of those tall, stately, and elaborate pieces of furniture that

are rather articles of architecture than upholstery; and on which a

higher skill, feeling, and genius than now is ever employed on such

things, was expended. Alice drew near the stately cabinet and threw wide

the doors, which, like the portals of a palace, stood between two

pillars; it all seemed to be unlocked, showing within some beautiful old

pictures in the panel of the doors, and a mirror, that opened a long

succession of mimic halls, reflection upon reflection, extending to an

interminable nowhere.

“And what is this?” said Middleton,--“a cabinet? Why do you draw my

attention so strongly to it?”

“Look at it well,” said she. “Do you recognize nothing there? Have you

forgotten your description? The stately palace with its architecture,

each pillar with its architecture, those pilasters, that frieze; you

ought to know them all. Somewhat less than you imagined in size,

perhaps; a fairy reality, inches for yards; that is the only difference.

And you have the key?”

And there then was that palace, to which tradition, so false at once and

true, had given such magnitude and magnificence in the traditions of the

Middleton family, around their shifting fireside in America. Looming

afar through the mists of time, the little fact had become a gigantic

vision. Yes, here it was in miniature, all that he had dreamed of; a

palace of four feet high!

“You have the key of this palace,” said Alice; “it has waited--that is,

its secret and precious chamber has, for you to open it, these three

hundred years. Do you know how to find that secret chamber?”

Middleton, still in that dreamy mood, threw open an inner door of the

cabinet, and applying the old-fashioned key at his watch-chain to a hole

in the mimic pavement within, pressed one of the mosaics, and immediately

the whole floor of the apartment sank, and revealed a receptacle withal.

Alice had come forward eagerly, and they both looked into the

hiding-place, expecting what should be there. It was empty! They looked

into each other’s faces with blank astonishment. Everything had been so

strangely true, and so strangely false, up to this moment, that they

could not comprehend this failure at the last moment. It was the

strangest, saddest jest! It brought Middleton up with such a sudden

revulsion that he grew dizzy, and the room swam round him and the cabinet

dazzled before his eyes. It had been magnified to a palace; it had

dwindled down to Liliputian size; and yet, up till now, it had seemed to

contain in its diminutiveness all the riches which he had attributed to

its magnitude. This last moment had utterly subverted it; the whole

great structure seemed to vanish.

“See; here are the dust and ashes of it,” observed Alice, taking

something that was indeed only a pinch of dust out of the secret

compartment. “There is nothing else.”

II.

May 5th, Wednesday.--The father of these two sons, an aged man at the

time, took much to heart their enmity; and after the catastrophe, he

never held up his head again. He was not told that his son had perished,

though such was the belief of the family; but imbibed the opinion that he

had left his home and native land to become a wanderer on the face of the

earth, and that some time or other he might return. In this idea he

spent the remainder of his days; in this idea he died. It may be that

the influence of this idea might be traced in the way in which he spent

some of the latter years of his life, and a portion of the wealth which

had become of little value in his eyes, since it had caused dissension

and bloodshed between the sons of one household. It was a common mode of

charity in those days--a common thing for rich men to do--to found an

almshouse or a hospital, and endow it, for the support of a certain

number of old and destitute men or women, generally such as had some

claim of blood upon the founder, or at least were natives of the parish,

the district, the county, where he dwelt. The Eldredge Hospital was

founded for the benefit of twelve old men, who should have been wanderers

upon the face of the earth; men, they should be, of some education, but

defeated and hopeless, cast off by the world for misfortune, but not for

crime. And this charity had subsisted, on terms varying little or

nothing from the original ones, from that day to this; and, at this very

time, twelve old men were not wanting, of various countries, of various

fortunes, but all ending finally in ruin, who had centred here, to live

on the poor pittance that had been assigned to them, three hundred years

ago. What a series of chronicles it would have been if each of the

beneficiaries of this charity, since its foundation, had left a record of

the events which finally led him hither. Middleton often, as he talked

with these old men, regretted that he himself had no turn for authorship,

so rich a volume might he have compiled from the experience, sometimes

sunny and triumphant, though always ending in shadow, which he gathered

here. They were glad to talk to him, and would have been glad and

grateful for any auditor, as they sat on one or another of the stone

benches, in the sunshine of the garden; or at evening, around the great

fireside, or within the chimney-corner, with their pipes and ale.

There was one old man who attracted much of his attention, by the

venerableness of his aspect; by something dignified, almost haughty and

commanding, in his air. Whatever might have been the intentions and

expectations of the founder, it certainly had happened in these latter

days that there was a difficulty in finding persons of education, of good

manners, of evident respectability, to put into the places made vacant by

deaths of members; whether that the paths of life are surer now than they

used to be, and that men so arrange their lives as not to be left, in any

event, quite without resources as they draw near its close; at any rate,

there was a little tincture of the vagabond running through these twelve

quasi gentlemen,--through several of them, at least. But this old man

could not well be mistaken; in his manners, in his tones, in all his

natural language and deportment, there was evidence that he had been more

than respectable; and, viewing him, Middleton could not help wondering

what statesman had suddenly vanished out of public life and taken refuge

here, for his head was of the statesman-class, and his demeanor that of

one who had exercised influence over large numbers of men. He sometimes

endeavored to set on foot a familiar relation with this old man, but

there was even a sternness in the manner in which he repelled these

advances, that gave little encouragement for their renewal. Nor did it

seem that his companions of the Hospital were more in his confidence than

Middleton himself. They regarded him with a kind of awe, a shyness, and

in most cases with a certain dislike, which denoted an imperfect

understanding of him. To say the truth, there was not generally much

love lost between any of the members of this family; they had met with

too much disappointment in the world to take kindly, now, to one another

or to anything or anybody. I rather suspect that they really had more

pleasure in burying one another, when the time came, than in any other

office of mutual kindness and brotherly love which it was their part to

do; not out of hardness of heart, but merely from soured temper, and

because, when people have met disappointment and have settled down into

final unhappiness, with no more gush and spring of good spirits, there is

nothing any more to create amiability out of.

So the old people were unamiable and cross to one another, and unamiable

and cross to old Hammond, yet always with a certain respect; and the

result seemed to be such as treated the old man well enough. And thus he

moved about among them, a mystery; the histories of the others, in the

general outline, were well enough known, and perhaps not very uncommon;

this old man’s history was known to none, except, of course, to the

trustees of the charity, and to the Master of the Hospital, to whom it

had necessarily been revealed, before the beneficiary could be admitted

as an inmate. It was judged, by the deportment of the Master, that the

old man had once held some eminent position in society; for, though bound

to treat them all as gentlemen, he was thought to show an especial and

solemn courtesy to Hammond.

Yet by the attraction which two strong and cultivated minds inevitably

have for one another, there did spring up an acquaintanceship, an

intercourse, between Middleton and this old man, which was followed up in

many a conversation which they held together on all subjects that were

supplied by the news of the day, or the history of the past. Middleton

used to make the newspaper the opening for much discussion; and it seemed

to him that the talk of his companion had much of the character of that

of a retired statesman, on matters which, perhaps, he would look at all

the more wisely, because it was impossible he could ever more have a

personal agency in them. Their discussions sometimes turned upon the

affairs of his own country, and its relations with the rest of the world,

especially with England; and Middleton could not help being struck with

the accuracy of the old man’s knowledge respecting that country, which so

few Englishmen know anything about; his shrewd appreciation of the

American character,--shrewd and caustic, yet not without a good degree of

justice; the sagacity of his remarks on the past, and prophecies of what

was likely to happen,--prophecies which, in one instance, were singularly

verified, in regard to a complexity which was then arresting the

attention of both countries.

“You must have been in the United States,” said he, one day.

“Certainly; my remarks imply personal knowledge,” was the reply. “But it

was before the days of steam.”

“And not, I should imagine, for a brief visit,” said Middleton. “I only

wish the administration of this government had the benefit to-day of your

knowledge of my countrymen. It might be better for both of these kindred

nations.”

“Not a whit,” said the old man. “England will never understand America;

for England never does understand a foreign country; and whatever you may

say about kindred, America is as much a foreign country as France itself.

These two hundred years of a different climate and circumstances--of life

on a broad continent instead of in an island, to say nothing of the

endless intermixture of nationalities in every part of the United States,

except New England--have created a new and decidedly original type of

national character. It is as well for both parties that they should not

aim at any very intimate connection. It will never do.”

“I should be very sorry to think so,” said Middleton; “they are at all

events two noble breeds of men, and ought to appreciate one another. And

America has the breadth of idea to do this for England, whether

reciprocated or not.”

Thursday, May 6th.--Thus Middleton was established in a singular way

among these old men, in one of the surroundings most unlike anything in

his own country. So old it was that it seemed to him the freshest and

newest thing that he had ever met with. The residence was made

infinitely the more interesting to him by the sense that he was near the

place--as all the indications warned him--which he sought, whither his

dreams had tended from his childhood; that he could wander each day round

the park within which were the old gables of what he believed was his

hereditary home. He had never known anything like the dreamy enjoyment

of these days; so quiet, such a contrast to the turbulent life from which

he had escaped across the sea. And here he set himself, still with that

sense of shadowiness in what he saw and in what he did, in making all the

researches possible to him, about the neighborhood; visiting every little

church that raised its square battlemented Norman tower of gray stone,

for several miles round about; making himself acquainted with each little

village and hamlet that surrounded these churches, clustering about the

graves of those who had dwelt in the same cottages aforetime. He visited

all the towns within a dozen miles; and probably there were few of the

inhabitants who had so good an acquaintance with the neighborhood as this

native American attained within a few weeks after his coming thither.

In course of these excursions he had several times met with a young

woman,--a young lady, one might term her, but in fact he was in some

doubt what rank she might hold, in England,--who happened to be wandering

about the country with a singular freedom. She was always alone, always

on foot; he would see her sketching some picturesque old church, some

ivied ruin, some fine drooping elm. She was a slight figure, much more

so than Englishwomen generally are; and, though healthy of aspect, had

not the ruddy complexion, which he was irreverently inclined to call the

coarse tint, that is believed the great charm of English beauty. There

was a freedom in her step and whole little womanhood, an elasticity, an

irregularity, so to speak, that made her memorable from first sight; and

when he had encountered her three or four times, he felt in a certain way

acquainted with her. She was very simply dressed, and quite as simple in

her deportment; there had been one or two occasions, when they had both

smiled at the same thing; soon afterwards a little conversation had taken

place between them; and thus, without any introduction, and in a way that

somewhat puzzled Middleton himself, they had become acquainted. It was

so unusual that a young English girl should be wandering about the

country entirely alone--so much less usual that she should speak to a

stranger--that Middleton scarcely knew how to account for it, but

meanwhile accepted the fact readily and willingly, for in truth he found

this mysterious personage a very likely and entertaining companion.

There was a strange quality of boldness in her remarks, almost of

brusqueness, that he might have expected to find in a young countrywoman

of his own, if bred up among the strong-minded, but was astonished to

find in a young Englishwoman. Somehow or other she made him think more

of home than any other person or thing he met with; and he could not but

feel that she was in strange contrast with everything about her. She was

no beauty; very piquant; very pleasing; in some points of view and at

some moments pretty; always good-humored, but somewhat too self-possessed

for Middleton’s taste. It struck him that she had talked with him as if

she had some knowledge of him and of the purposes with which he was

there; not that this was expressed, but only implied by the fact that, on

looking back to what had passed, he found many strange coincidences in

what she had said with what he was thinking about.

He perplexed himself much with thinking whence this young woman had come,

where she belonged, and what might be her history; when, the next day, he

again saw her, not this time rambling on foot, but seated in an open

barouche with a young lady. Middleton lifted his hat to her, and she

nodded and smiled to him; and it appeared to Middleton that a

conversation ensued about him with the young lady, her companion. Now,

what still more interested him was the fact that, on the panel of the

barouche were the arms of the family now in possession of the estate of

Smithell’s; so that the young lady, his new acquaintance, or the young

lady, her seeming friend, one or the other, was the sister of the present

owner of that estate. He was inclined to think that his acquaintance

could not be the Miss Eldredge, of whose beauty he had heard many tales

among the people of the neighborhood. The other young lady, a tall,

reserved, fair-haired maiden, answered the description considerably

better. He concluded, therefore, that his acquaintance must be a

visitor, perhaps a dependent and companion; though the freedom of her

thought, action, and way of life seemed hardly consistent with this idea.

However, this slight incident served to give him a sort of connection

with the family, and he could but hope that some further chance would

introduce him within what he fondly called his hereditary walls. He had

come to think of this as a dreamland; and it seemed even more a dreamland

now than before it rendered itself into actual substance, an old house of

stone and timber standing within its park, shaded about with its

ancestral trees.

But thus, at all events, he was getting himself a little wrought into the

net-work of human life around him, secluded as his position had at first

seemed to be, in the farm-house where he had taken up his lodgings. For,

there was the Hospital and its old inhabitants, in whose monotonous

existence he soon came to pass for something, with his liveliness of

mind, his experience, his good sense, his patience as a listener, his

comparative youth even--his power of adapting himself to these stiff and

crusty characters, a power learned among other things in his political

life, where he had acquired something of the faculty (good or bad as

might be) of making himself all things to all men. But though he amused

himself with them all, there was in truth but one man among them in whom

he really felt much interest; and that one, we need hardly say, was

Hammond. It was not often that he found the old gentleman in a

conversible mood; always courteous, indeed, but generally cool and

reserved; often engaged in his one room, to which Middleton had never yet

been admitted, though he had more than once sent in his name, when

Hammond was not apparent upon the bench which, by common consent of the

Hospital, was appropriated to him.

One day, however, notwithstanding that the old gentleman was confined to

his room by indisposition, he ventured to inquire at the door, and,

considerably to his surprise, was admitted. He found Hammond in his

easy-chair, at a table, with writing-materials before him: and as

Middleton entered, the old gentleman looked at him with a stern, fixed

regard, which, however, did not seem to imply any particular displeasure

towards this visitor, but rather a severe way of regarding mankind in

general. Middleton looked curiously around the small apartment, to see

what modification the character of the man had had upon the customary

furniture of the Hospital, and how much of individuality he had given to

that general type. There was a shelf of books, and a row of them on the

mantel-piece; works of political economy, they appeared to be, statistics

and things of that sort; very dry reading, with which, however,

Middleton’s experience as a politician had made him acquainted. Besides

there were a few works on local antiquities, a county-history borrowed

from the Master’s library, in which Hammond appeared to have been lately

reading.

“They are delightful reading,” observed Middleton, “these old

county-histories, with their great folio volumes and their minute account

of the affairs of families and the genealogies, and descents of estates,

bestowing as much blessed space on a few hundred acres as other

historians give to a principality. I fear that in my own country we

shall never have anything of this kind. Our space is so vast that we

shall never come to know and love it, inch by inch, as the English

antiquarians do the tracts of country with which they deal; and besides,

our land is always likely to lack the interest that belongs to English

estates; for where land changes its ownership every few years, it does

not become imbued with the personalities of the people who live on it.

It is but so much grass; so much dirt, where a succession of people have

dwelt too little to make it really their own. But I have found a

pleasure that I had no conception of before, in reading some of the

English local histories.”

“It is not a usual course of reading for a transitory visitor,” said

Hammond. “What could induce you to undertake it?”

“Simply the wish, so common and natural with Americans,” said Middleton--

“the wish to find out something about my kindred--the local origin of my

own family.”