Doctor Grimshawe's Secret

by some sudden spasm in his gripe of it. "Pooh! the devil take th

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,

tor. "Why did not he

aster, "only that he was kept in a cha

oth the Doctor. "He was

use a certain kind of torture with the poor heir, and how he had suffered from this; but one night, when they left him senseless, he contrived to make his escape from that cruel home, bleeding as he went; and how, by some action of his imagination,-his sense of the cruelty and hideousness of such treatm

the grim Doctor, who was puffing away

ld our race descended. And they say, too, that she sent him a key to a coffin, in which was locked up a great treasure. But we have not the key. But he never went back to his own country; and being

of a dark blood-red color, so much was his anger and contempt excited, "and of

heard of it," answe

have some

l recoverable by search," said the s

ange how human folly strings itself on to human folly

he had any taste for pictures, and drew his attention to the portrait which has been already mentioned,-the figure in antique sordid garb, with a halter round his neck, and the expression in his face which the Doctor and the two children had interpreted so differently. Colcord, wh

rying about?" s

ng in this picture that affects me inexpressibly; so that, not being

ides about the room. "I am ashamed of a grown man tha

ed monster that he was, and swung about his master's head in hideous conference as it seemed; a sight that so distressed the schoolmaster, or shocked his delicate

heat, blackness, ashes, a smouldering of old thoughts, a blazing up of new; casting in the gold of his mind, as Aaron did that of the Israelites, and waiting to see what sort of a thing would come out of the furnace. The children coming in from their play, he spoke harshly to them, and e

Crusty Hannah knew it in the kitchen: even those who passed the house must have known it somehow or other, and have felt a chill, an irritation, an influence on the nerves, as they passed. The spiders knew it, and acted as they were wont to do in stormy weather. The schoolmaster, when he returned from his walk

ur possession relating to the English descent of your ancestors. I ha

rimshawe, who looked over them with interest. They seemed to consist of letters, genealogical lists, certified copies of entries in registers, things which must have been made out by somebody who knew more of

he condition of the family to wh

ry and saw the place. But, you see, the change of name has effectually covered us from view; and I feel that our true name is that which my ancestor assumed when he was

nterests of two hundred years, which of themselves have built up an impenetrably strong allegation against you. They harde

interest with me," re

right!" repeated

y could tell. Again, for no more suitable reason, he uplifted his stalwart arm, and smote a heavy blow with his fist upon the oak table, making the tumbler and black bottle leap up, and damaging, one would think, his own knuckles. Then he rose up, and resumed his strides about the room. He paused before the portrait before mentioned; then resumed his heavy, quick, irregular tread, swearing under his breath; and you wou

the demeanor of the Doctor, like a being looking from another sphere into the trouble of the m

length, "thou hast so

o a stand before his chair. "You see

you had kept a snake for many years in your bosom, and stupefied it with

n do you think me?

he sympathies of my nature are not those t

ued the grim Doctor, "a m

id Colcord; "a great good

, my soul,-my success in life, my days and nights of thought, my years of time, dwelling upon it, pledging myself to it, until at last I had g

out my ways," said the schoolmaster. "I walk gen

us laughs. "So do we all, in spite of ourselves; and sometimes

Doctor's emotions; a sort of like to like, that he instinctively felt to be a remedy, But in truth it was difficult to see these two human creatures together, without feeling their incompatibility; without having a sense that one must be hostile to the other. The schoolmaster, through his fine instincts, doubtless had a sense of this, and sat gazing at the lurid, wrathful figure of the Doctor, in a sort of trance and fascin

shrill with passion. The listener, though affrighted, could not resist an impulse to pause, and attempt overhearing something that might let him into the secret counsels of this strange wild man, whom the town held in such awe and antipathy; to learn, perhaps, what was the great spider, and whether he were summoning the dead out of their graves. However, he could make nothing out of what he overheard, except it were frag

e Doctor discharged this fiendish shot. For, the next spring, when April came, no tender leaves budded forth, no life awakened there; and never again, on that old elm, widely as its roots were imbedded among the dead of many years, was there rustling bough in the summer time, or the elm's early golden boughs in September; and after waiting till another spring to give it a fair chance of reviving, it was cut down and made into coffins, and burnt on the sexton's hearth. The general opinion was that the grim Doctor's awful profanity had blasted that tree, fostered, as it had been, on grave-mould o