the
neighbourhood where I was born and bred. The first was a series of marks
called the 'Devil's footsteps.' These were patches of sand in the
pastures, where no grass grew, where even the low-bush blackberry, the
'dewberry,' as our Southern neighbours call it, in prettier and more
Shakespearian language, did not spread its clinging creepers, where even
the pale, dry, sadly-sweet 'everlasting' could not grow, but all was bare
and blasted. The second was a mark in one of the public buildings near
my home,--the college dormitory named after a Colonial Governor. I do
not think many persons are aware of the existence of this mark,--little
having been said about the story in print, as it was considered very
desirable, for the sake of the Institution, to hush it up. In the north-
west corner, and on the level of the third or fourth storey, there are
signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty well, but not to be
mistaken. A considerable portion of that corner must have been carried
away, from within outward. It was an unpleasant affair, and I do not
care to repeat the particulars; but some young men had been using sacred
things in a profane and unlawful way, when the occurrence, which was
variously explained, took place. The story of the Appearance in the
chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the
building there could be no question; and the zigzag line, where the
mortar is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible.

"The queer burnt spots, called the 'Devil's footsteps,' had never
attracted attention before this time, though there is no evidence that
they had not existed previously, except that of the late Miss M., a
'Goody,' so called, who was positive on the subject, but had a strange
horror of referring to an affair of which she was thought to know
something . . . I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of
impressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, with
untenanted locked upper chambers, and a most ghostly garret,--with
'Devil's footsteps' in the fields behind the house, and in front of it
the patched dormitory, where the unexplained occurrence had taken place
which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one
of them was epileptic from that day forward, and another, after a
dreadful season of mental conflict, took to religion, and became renowned
for his ascetic sanctity."

It is a pity that Dr. Holmes does not