renowned in war; and there seemed, too, to be running through the family a
certain tendency to letters, for three were designated as of the colleges
of Oxford or Cambridge; and against one there was the note, "he that sold
himself to Sathan;" and another seemed to have been a follower of
Wickliffe; and they had murdered kings, and been beheaded, and banished,
and what not; so that the age-long life of this ancient family had not
been after all a happy or very prosperous one, though they had kept their
estate, in one or another descendant, since the Conquest. It was not
wholly without interest that Septimius saw that this ancient descent, this
connection with noble families, and intermarriages with names, some of
which he recognized as known in English history, all referred to his own
family, and seemed to centre in himself, the last of a poverty-stricken
line, which had dwindled down into obscurity, and into rustic labor and
humble toil, reviving in him a little; yet how little, unless he fulfilled
his strange purpose. Was it not better worth his while to take this
English position here so strangely offered him? He had apparently slain
unwittingly the only person who could have contested his rights,--the
young man who had so strangely brought him the hope of unlimited life at
the same time that he was making room for him among his forefathers. What
a change in his lot would have been here, for there seemed to be some
pretensions to a title, too, from a barony which was floating about and
occasionally moving out of abeyancy!

"Perhaps," said Septimius to himself, "I may hereafter think it worth while
to assert my claim to these possessions, to this position amid an ancient
aristocracy, and try that mode of life for one generation. Yet there is
something in my destiny incompatible, of course, with the continued
possession of an estate. I must be, of necessity, a wanderer on the face
of the earth, changing place at short intervals, disappearing suddenly and
entirely; else the foolish, short-lived multitude and mob of mortals will