The Baron marched on: the uneasiness in his foot increased. He plucked
off his boot; a horse's tooth was sticking in his great toe!

The result may be anticipated. Lame as he was, his lordship, with
characteristic decision, would hobble on to Shurland; his walk increased
the inflammation; a flagon of _aqua vitae_ did not mend matters. He was
in a high fever; he took to his bed. Next morning the toe presented the
appearance of a Bedfordshire carrot; by dinner time it had deepened to
beet-root; and when Bargrave, the leech, at last sliced it off, the
gangrene was too confirmed to admit of remedy. Dame Martin thought it
high time to send for Miss Margaret, who, ever since her mother's death,
had been living with her maternal aunt, the abbess, in the Ursuline
convent at Greenwich. The young lady came, and with her came one Master
Ingoldsby, her cousin-german by the mother's side; but the Baron was too
far gone in the dead-thraw to recognize either. He died as he lived,
unconquered and unconquerable. His last words were--"tell the old hag
she may go to--." Whither remains a secret. He expired without fully
articulating the place of her destination.

But who and what _was_ the crone who prophesied the catastrophe?
Ay, "that is the mystery of this wonderful history."--Some say it was
Dame Fothergill, the late confessor's mamma; others, St. Bridget
herself; others thought it was nobody at all, but only a phantom
conjured up by conscience. As we do not know, we decline giving an
opinion.

And what became of the Clerk of Chatham? Mr. Simkinson avers that he
lived to a good old age, and was at last hanged by Jack Cade, with his
inkhorn about his neck, for "setting boys copies." In support of this
he adduces his name "Emmanuel," and refers to the historian