threshold of the door of the old manor-house there was the print of a
bloody footstep; and no trouble that the housemaids took, no rain of
all the years that have since passed, no sunshine, has made it fade:
nor have all the wear and tramp of feet passing over it since then
availed to erase it.

"I have seen it myself," quoth the Doctor, "and know this to be true."

"Doctor Grim, now you are laughing at us," said Ned, trying to look
grave. But Elsie hid her face on the Doctor's knee; there being
something that affected the vivid little girl with peculiar horror in
the idea of this red footstep always glistening on the doorstep, and
wetting, as she fancied, every innocent foot of child or grown person
that had since passed over it. [Endnote: 3.]

"It is true!" reiterated the grim Doctor; "for, man and boy, I have
seen it a thousand times."

He continued the family history, or tradition, or fantastic legend,
whichever it might be; telling his young auditors that the Puritan, the
renegade son of the family, was afterwards, by the contrivances of his
brethren, sent to Virginia and sold as a bond slave; and how he had
vanished from that quarter and come to New England, where he was
supposed to have left children. And by and by two elder brothers died,
and this missing brother became the heir to the old estate and to a
title. Then the family tried to track his bloody footstep, and sought
it far and near, through green country paths, and old streets of
London; but in vain. Then they sent messengers to see whether any
traces of one stepping in blood could be found on the forest leaves of
America; but still in vain. The idea nevertheless prevailed that he