Doctor Grimshawe's Secret

, unshorn, unbrushed, odd sort of a pagan as at other times, and making no difference in his breakfast, except that he poured

er, flinging their little jokes about the table, and expecting that the Doctor might, as was often his wont, set some ponderous old English joke trundling round among the breakfast cups; eating the corn-cakes which crusty Hann

?" said Ned, pausing as he

Grim?" said

light as the schoolmaster's. The fiend take me if I thought he had mortal mould enough in him ever to go to sleep at all; thoug

er's chamber several times, till the Doctor shouted to her wrathfully to cease her

assa. Schoolmas

a bubble!" qu

usty Hannah, chuckling with a sense of mischief th

k," said little Ned; "don't

, little monkey; the walk may be a long one, or he is s

had blown him, as the Doctor suggested, into parts unknown; for, from that time

d to go away, why did he not take this little luggage in his hand, being all he had, and of a kind not easily dispensed with? The Doctor made small question about it, however; he had seemed surprised, at first, y

r the manner of the town crier; "supposed to have been blown out of Do

ctor Grim," said little Elsie, looking int

saucy little witch

hat seemed to satisfy Elsie better. Crusty Hannah, meanwhile, seemed to dance about the house with a certain singular alacrity, a wonderful friskiness, indeed, as if the diabolical result of the mixture in her nature was particularly pleased with something; so she

nd their insulation from the world, through the crystal medium of this stranger's character. In remembering him in connection with these things, a certain seemly beauty in him showed strikingly the unfitness, the sombre and tarnished color, the outréness, of the rest of their lot. Little Elsie perhaps felt the loss of him more than her playmate, although both had been interested by him. But now things returned pretty much to their old fashion; although, as is inevitably the case, whenever persons or things have been taken suddenly or unaccountably out of our sphere, without telling us whither and why they have disappeared, the child

served to cut and grave the recollection of him into the children's hearts, so that it remained a life-long thing with them,-a sense that he was something that had been lost out of their life too soon, and that was bound, sooner or later, to reappear, and finish what business he had with them.

r Grim?" as

e himself were thinking why, and at last he an

said Ne

n the beef out of y

also, in the baskets that they carried, minerals, rare things, that a magic touch seemed to have created out of the rude and common things that others find in a homely and ordinary region. The boy was growing tall, and had got out of the merely infantile age; agile he was, bright, but still with a remarkable thoughtfulness, or gravity, or I know not what to call it; but it was a shadow, no doubt, falling upon him from something sombre in his warp of life, which the impressibility of his age and nature so far acknowledged as to be a little pale and grave, without positive unhappiness; and when a playful moment came, as they often did to these two healthy children, it seemed all a mistake that you had ever thought either of them too grave for their age. But little Elsie was still the merrier. They were still children, although they quarrelled seldomer than of yore, and kissed seldomer, and had ceased altogether to complain of on

ometry, and algebra; inaccurate enough, but yet with such a briskness that she was sometimes able to assist Ned in studies in which he was far more deeply grounded than herself. All this, however, was more by sympathy than by any natural taste for such things; being kindly, and sympathetic, and impressible, she took the color of what was nearest to her, and especially when it came from a beloved object, so that it was diffic

. Never was anything seen, that so combined a wild, barbarian freedom with cultivated grace; and the grim Doctor himself, little open to the impressions of the beautiful, used to hold some of her productions in his hand, gazing at them with deep intentness, and at last, perhaps, breaking out into one of his deep roars of laughter; for it seemed to suggest thoughts to him

f his moodiness, to play with the children, though they would often be sensible of his fierce eyes fixed upon them, and start and feel incommoded by the intensity of his regard;-thus things were going on, when one day there was really again a visitor, and not a dilapidated patient, to the grim Doc

akably white linen, was rather careless in attire. You would have thought twice, perhaps, before deciding him to be a gentleman, but finally would have decided that he was; one great token being, that the singular aspect of the room into which he was ushered, the spider festoo

Doctor, with his usual sparseness o

ranger

r, but nowise intimating that the fact of being

Lincoln's Inn, who, having little or nothing to detain him at home, has come to spend a

is manner, and scowling askance at the stranger,-"what may have drawn on me t

you," said he, "chiefly because I was idle, and wanted to turn my enforced idleness to what profit I could, in the way of seeing men, manners, governments, and problems, which I hope to have no time to study by and by. But I also had an erra

d the grim Doctor, "ought to know, by this time, that I am

r, still with mild courtesy, "that at least it may ex

deemed, to his taste, by its grimness. "I might help you there, to be sure, since it is all in the way of business. Like others of my profession, I have he

t a while before making the discovery of that little spot in Mother Earth which I am destined to occupy. It is a grave which has been occupied as such for at least a century and a half which I am

genially, but rather with a lurid glance of suspicion out of those red eyes of his, but no longer with a

hing valuable to the family, were buried in the grave of this emigrant; and there have been various attempts, within a century, to find this grave, and if possible some living descendant of the man, or both, under the idea that either of these cases might influence the disputed descent of the property, and enable the famil

this family?" asked

stranger, "lived and died, in this coun

r search? And moreover, how have you come to any knowledge whatever about the matter, even that the emigrant ever assumed this name

hing that might take the hereditary possessions of the family out of the branch which still held them; and there is strong reason to suspect that the information acquired was purposely kept secret by the person in England into whose hands it came.

aid the Doctor, after a turn or two th

y, in this town," said Hammond, "and may be fo

ied in the graveyard under these windows," said the Doctor. "What marks, I say,-for you m

signifies I cannot conjecture, except it had some reference to a certain legend of a bloody footstep, which

fox and geese in a corner near the window. But little Elsie, having very quick ears, and a faculty of at

" whispered N

, both of you," sa