some sudden spasm in his gripe of it. "Pooh! the devil take the pipe! A
very strange story that! Pray how was it?" [Endnote: 1.]

"Nay, it is but a very dim legend," answered the schoolmaster:
"although there are old yellow papers and parchments, I remember, in my
father's possession, that had some reference to this man, too, though
there was nothing in them about the bloody footprints. But our family
legend is, that this man was of a good race, in the time of Charles the
First, originally Papists, but one of them--the second you, our legend
says--was of a milder, sweeter cast than the rest, who were fierce and
bloody men, of a hard, strong nature; but he partook most of his
mother's character. This son had been one of the earliest Quakers,
converted by George Fox; and moreover there had been love between him
and a young lady of great beauty and an heiress, whom likewise the
eldest son of the house had designed to make his wife. And these
brothers, cruel men, caught their innocent brother and kept him in
confinement long in his own native home--"

"How?" asked the Doctor. "Why did not he appeal to the laws?"

"Our legend says," replied the schoolmaster, "only that he was kept in
a chamber that was forgotten." [Endnote: 2.]

"Very strange that!" quoth the Doctor. "He was sold by his brethren."

The schoolmaster went on to tell, with much shuddering, how a Jesuit
priest had been mixed up with this wretched business, and there had
been a scheme at once religious and political to wrest the estate and
the lovely lady from the fortunate heir; and how this grim Italian
priest had instigated them to use a certain kind of torture with the