stretching back to the ghosts of those who had flourished in the old, old
times; the doubletted and beruffled knightly shades of Queen Elizabeth's
time; a long line, stretching from the mediaeval ages, and their
duskiness, downward, downward, with only one vacant space, that of him
who had left the Bloody Footstep. There was an inexpressible pleasure
(airy and evanescent, gone in a moment if he dwelt upon it too
thoughtfully, but very sweet) to Middleton's imagination, in this idea.
When he reflected, however, that his revelations, if they had any effect
at all, might serve only to quench the hopes of these long expectants, it
of course made him hesitate to declare himself.

One afternoon, when he was in the midst of musings such as this, he saw
at a distance through the park, in the direction of the manor-house, a
person who seemed to be walking slowly and seeking for something upon the
ground. He was a long way off when Middleton first perceived him; and
there were two clumps of trees and underbrush, with interspersed tracts
of sunny lawn, between them. The person, whoever he was, kept on, and
plunged into the first clump of shrubbery, still keeping his eyes on the
ground, as if intensely searching for something. When he emerged from the
concealment of the first clump of shrubbery, Middleton saw that he was a
tall, thin person, in a dark dress; and this was the chief observation
that the distance enabled him to make, as the figure kept slowly onward,
in a somewhat wavering line, and plunged into the second clump of
shrubbery. From that, too, he emerged; and soon appeared to be a thin
elderly figure, of a dark man with gray hair, bent, as it seemed to
Middleton, with infirmity, for his figure still stooped even in the
intervals when he did not appear to be tracking the ground. But Middleton
could not but be surprised at the singular appearance the figure had of
setting its foot, at every step, just where a previous footstep had been
made, as if he wanted to measure his whole pathway in the track of