Doctor Grimshawe's Secret

he pleasant, genial expression of a person gifted with a natural liking for children, and the freemasonry requisite to bring him acquainted with them; and it lighted up his face with a

et his eyes with a glance that Ned long afterwards remembered; but yet he seemed quite

if they are your own?-Pardon me if I ask amiss,

e grimly. "Thank Heaven, they are not my

tenance; not in the least English. The true American face, no doubt. As to this sweet little girl, she

ff impatience. "If they are to be so, our conversation is ended. N

to fancy so, because of a story that we used to play at. But we were children then. The gravestone lies on the groun

chooses to come to America, he must take our snows as he finds them. T

ery stone that raised itself above the level; it filled enviously the letters of the inscriptions, enveloping all the dead in one great winding-sheet, whiter and colder than those which they had individually worn. The dreary space was pathless; not a footstep had tracked through the heavy snow; for it must

aid the Doctor

ny grave could be called new in that often-dug soil, made up of old mortality), an open hole, with the freshly-dug earth piled up beside it. A little snow (for there had been a gust or two since morning) a

n much perplexity, "and, as far as I can judge, the old sunken g

indecorum, "that the new person should be thrus

he headstone!" exclaimed

stooping shoulders, over one of which was a spade and some other tool fit for delving in the earth; and in his face there was the sort of keen, humorous tw

are you looking for one of your patients? The man who is t

them more. What I want to know is, why you have taken upon you to steal a man's grave, after he has had immemorial possession of it.

strange thing enough, if, when living families are turned out of their homes twice or thrice in a generation, (as they are likely to be in our new government,) a dead man should think he must sleep in one spot till the day of judgment. No; turn about, I say,

glish stranger. "But, my good friend, I have come three thousand miles, par

who was a grave-digger afore me, died four and thirty years ago, when we were under the King; and says he, 'Ebenezer, d

of such a singular proh

newspapers keep us from talking in the chimney-corner; and so things go out of our minds. An old man, with his stories of what he has seen, and what his great-grandfather saw before

you know about

f wisdom and knowledge, about graves especially, buried out yonder where my old father was put away, before the Stamp Act was thought of. But it

th the headstone?" said the Doct

t 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 th

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

t soul, who departed this troublous life September ye nineteenth, 1667, aged 57 ye

ion of the stone, to tell whether wantonly, or with a purpose of altering and correcti

the impress of what was meant for a human foot, and coincides strangely with the legend o

used to call it the stamp of Satan's foot, because he claimed the dead man for

egend," remarked the Doctor. "But did

nd if you are curious about them, you will find them when the snow melts. That was all; and it would have been unreasonable in ol

said Hammond, with a sigh. "Here, my

an times we can't take anything for nothing, because it won

e the silver, and winked

having voluntarily presented himself to the Doctor, had only himself to thank for any scant courtesy he might meet,-but now the grim Doctor became genial after his own fashion. At dinner he produced a bottle of port, which made the young Englishman almost fancy himself on the other side of the water; and he entered into a conversation, which I fancy was the chief object which the grim Doctor had in view in showing himself in s

ting a countryman, has made me unusually talkative, and on su

ntry, as you see," said Doctor Grimshawe, "though

to his pipe and tumbler, the young Englishman sought to increase his acquaintance with the two children, both of whom showed themselves gra

England, my little fell

of his memory. After what the Doctor had told him of his origin, he had never felt any home feeling here; it seemed to him that he was wandering Ned, whom the wind had blown from afar. Somehow or other, from many circumstances which he put together and seethed in his own childi

ork out its own accomplishment. I shall meet you in England, my young friend, one day o

brother," sai

was observable that he never liked to have the conversation turn on

ffer and less communicative than he thought quite courteous, retired. But before he went, however, he could not

ting uppermost, so that it disturbed him; in fact, the spider above and the grim

from his web how to weave a plot, and

gray night, "I have escaped the grim fellow's web, at all events.

hich they plausibly conjectured to have appertained to some part of the framework of the ancient Colcord, wherewith he had walked through the troublous life of which his gravestone spoke. And little Elsie, whose eyes were very sharp, and her observant qualities of the quickest, found something which Ned at first pronounced to be only a bit of old iron, incrusted with earth;

search of," said Ned. "What a pity he i

said the g

he took from a drawer, and which seemed

he, "open it, and consider yourself heir

ng before any now remembered bard had begun to sing. But there were the rudiments of a poetic and imaginative mind within the boy, if its subsequent culture should be such as the growth of that delicate flower requires; a brooding habit taking outward things into itself and imbuing them with its own essence until, after they had lain there awhile, they assumed a relation both to truth and to himself, and became mediums to affect other minds with the magnetism of his own. He lived far too much an inward life for healthfulness, at his age; the peculiarity of his situation, a child of mystery, with certain reaches and vistas that seemed to promise a bright solution of his mystery, keeping his imagination always awake and strong. That castle in the air,-so much more vivid than other castles, because it had perhaps a real substance of ancient, ivy-grown, hewn stone somewhere,-that visionary hall in England, with its surrounding woods and fine lawns, and the beckoning shadows at the ancient windows, and that fearful threshold, with the blood still glistening on it,-he dwelt and wandered so much there, that he had no real life in the sombre hous

u in matters that the poor superficial people and time merely skim over; I looked to see the rudiments of a man in you, by this time; and you begin to mope and pule as if your babyhood were coming bac

d, with sullen dignity. "What you te

ll not bear it. I want you to be a man; and I'll have you a man or nothing. If I had foreboded such a fellow as you

cried little Elsie, in a tone

od gazing at him, with large eyes, in which there was a calm upbraiding; a strange dignity was in

the boy's aspect, "there is nonsens

me![Endnote: 4] It was not my fault that you took me from the alms-house. But it will be

mshawe, after a look at the group in which a bitter sort of mirth and mischief struggled with a better and kindlier sentiment, at last flung his pipe into t

how to treat a gentleman when he honors me with his company. It is not in my blood nor breeding to hav

hed out of his eyes in a torrent, and his whole frame shook with sobs. The Doctor caught him in his arms, and hugged him to his old tobacco-fragrant dressi

love nothing, so much as you. Little Elsie here, yes. I love her too. But that's different. You are a boy, and will be a man; and a man whom I destine to do for me what it has been the object of my life to achieve. Let us be friends. We will-we must be friends; and when old

rim, and, as he asked, loved him better than ever; and so did Elsie. Then it was so sweet, so good, to have had this one outgush of affection,-he, poor child, who had no memory of mother's kisses, or of being cared for out of tenderness, and whose heart had been hungry, all his life, for some such thing