something with it that is akin to eating; for my oven needs a new
floor, and I thought to take this stone, which would stand the fire
well. But here," continued he, scraping away the snow with his shovel,
a task in which little Ned gave his assistance,--"here is the
headstone, just as I have always seen it, and as my father saw it
before me."

The ancient memorial, being cleared of snow, proved to be a slab of
freestone, with some rude traces of carving in bas-relief around the
border, now much effaced, and an impression, which seemed to be as much
like a human foot as anything else, sunk into the slab; but this device
was wrought in a much more clumsy way than the ornamented border, and
evidently by an unskilful hand. Beneath was an inscription, over which
the hard, flat lichens had grown, and done their best to obliterate it,
although the following words might be written [Endnote: 2] or guessed:--

"Here lyeth the mortal part of Thomas Colcord, an upright man, of
tender and devout soul, who departed this troublous life September ye
nineteenth, 1667, aged 57 years and nine months. Happier in his death
than in his lifetime. Let his bones be."

The name, Colcord, was somewhat defaced; it was impossible, in the
general disintegration of the stone, to tell whether wantonly, or with
a purpose of altering and correcting some error in the spelling, or, as
occurred to Hammond, to change the name entirely.

"This is very unsatisfactory," said Hammond, "but very curious, too.
But this certainly is the impress of what was meant for a human foot,
and coincides strangely with the legend of the Bloody Footstep,--the
mark of the foot that trod in the blessed King Charles's blood."