remember, too,--what your friend Doctor Grim is ready to affirm and
make oath of,--that he can trace your kindred and race through that
sordid experience, and back, back, for a hundred and fifty years, into
an old English line. Come, little Ned, and look at this picture."

He led the boy by the hand to a corner of the room, where hung upon the
wall a portrait which Ned had often looked at. It seemed an old
picture; but the Doctor had had it cleaned and varnished, so that it
looked dim and dark, and yet it seemed to be the representation of a
man of no mark; not at least of such mark as would naturally leave his
features to be transmitted for the interest of another generation. For
he was clad in a mean dress of old fashion,--a leather jerkin it
appeared to be,--and round his neck, moreover, was a noose of rope, as
if he might have been on the point of being hanged. But the face of the
portrait, nevertheless, was beautiful, noble, though sad; with a great
development of sensibility, a look of suffering and endurance amounting
to triumph,--a peace through all.

"Look at this," continued the Doctor, "if you must go on dreaming about
your race. Dream that you are of the blood of this being; for, mean as
his station looks, he comes of an ancient and noble race, and was the
noblest of them all! Let me alone, Ned, and I shall spin out the web
that shall link you to that man. The grim Doctor can do it!"

The grim Doctor's face looked fierce with the earnestness with which he
said these words. You would have said that he was taking an oath to
overthrow and annihilate a race, rather than to build one up by
bringing forward the infant heir out of obscurity, and making plain the
links--the filaments--which cemented this feeble childish life, in a
far country, with the great tide of a noble life, which had come down