It might have been blood; but he rather thought, in his
wicked skepticism, that it was a natural, reddish stain in the stone. He
measured his own foot, however, in the Bloody Footstep.
May 10th, Monday.--This is the present aspect of the story: Middleton is
the descendant of a family long settled in the United States; his
ancestor having emigrated to New England with the Pilgrims; or, perhaps,
at a still earlier date, to Virginia with Raleigh's colonists. There had
been a family dissension,--a bitter hostility between two brothers in
England; on account, probably, of a love affair, the two both being
attached to the same lady. By the influence of the family on both sides,
the young lady had formed an engagement with the elder brother, although
her affections had settled on the younger. The marriage was about to
take place when the younger brother and the bride both disappeared, and
were never heard of with any certainty afterwards; but it was believed at
the time that he had been killed, and in proof of it a bloody footstep
remained on the threshold of the ancestral mansion. There were rumors,
afterwards, traditionally continued to the present day, that the younger
brother and the bride were seen, and together, in England; and that some
voyager across the sea had found them living together, husband and wife,
on the other side of the Atlantic.
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