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Updated: June 29, 2025
John vaulted over the rail of the pen and disappeared. A few moments later he came out again in company with the captain. Both were laughing heartily. "We've got the answer," puffed Captain Obed, who was out of breath. "We've laid the ghost. You remember I told you that day when we first explored this place that old Laban Eldredge had this pigpen built.
I am not an artist, only an American, who have strayed hither to enjoy this gentle, cultivated, tamed nature which I find in English parks, so contrasting with the wild, rugged nature of my native land. I beg your pardon, and will retire." "An American," repeated Mr. Eldredge, looking curiously at him.
"I am most happy to hear it, Mr. Eldredge," said Middleton. "But," continued his host, "I am bound to remember and to consider that for several generations there seems to have been the same idea, and the same expectation; whereas nothing has ever come of it.
Squire Eldredge seemed to be a good, ordinary sort of gentleman, reasonably well educated, and with few ideas beyond his estate and neighborhood, though he had once held a seat in Parliament for part of a term.
He feels a necessity of getting rid of him; and thenceforth Middleton's path lies always among pitfalls; indeed, the first attempt should follow promptly and immediately on his rupture with Eldredge. The utmost pains must be taken with this incident to give it an air of reality; or else it must be quite removed out of the sphere of reality by an intensified atmosphere of romance.
Eldredge might have committed a murder in Italy; might have been a patriot and betrayed his friends to death for a bribe, bearing another name than his own in Italy; indeed, he might have joined them only as an informer. All this he had tried to sink, when he came to England in the character of a gentleman of ancient name and large estate.
I wish I could get hold of the Newgate Calendar, the older volumes, or any other book of murders the Causes Celebres, for instance. The legendary murder, or attempt at it, will bring its own imaginative probability with it, when repeated by Eldredge; and at the same time it will have a dreamlike effect; so that Middleton shall hardly know whether he is awake or not.
"You spoke," replied his host, "of the Bloody Footstep reappearing on the threshold of the old palace of S . Now where, let me ask you, did you ever hear this strange name, which you then spoke, and which I have since spoken?" "From my father's lips, when a child, in America," responded Middleton. "It is very strange," said Mr. Eldredge, in a hasty, dissatisfied tone.
She was a quiet, shy, undemonstrative young woman, with a fine bloom and other charms which she kept as much in the background as possible, with maiden reserve. Mr. Eldredge talked chiefly, during dinner, of art, with which his long residence in Italy had made him thoroughly acquainted, and for which he seemed to have a genuine taste and enjoyment.
Eldredge, moreover, had resided long on the Continent; long in Italy; and had come back with habits that little accorded with those of the gentry of the neighborhood; so that, in fact, he was almost as much of a stranger, and perhaps quite as little of a real Englishman, as Middleton himself.
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