wn legend of "The Bloody Footstep" that he, in three
separate instances, founded fictions upon it. In his romance of
"Septimius" he gives this graphic account of what he saw: "On the
threshold of one of the doors of Smithells Hall there is a bloody
footstep impressed into the doorstep, and ruddy as if the bloody foot
had just trodden there, and it is averred that on a certain night of
the year, and at a certain hour of the night, if you go and look at
the doorstep, you will see the mark wet with fresh blood. Some have
pretended to say that this is but dew, but can dew redden a cambric
handkerchief? And this is what the bloody footstep will surely do when
the appointed night and hour come round." A local tradition says that
the stone bearing the imprint of the mysterious footprint was once
removed and cast into a neighbouring wood, but in a short time it had
to be restored to its original position owing to the alarming noises
which troubled the neighbourhood. This strange footprint is
traditionally said to have been caused by George Marsh, the martyr,
stamping his foot to confirm his testimony, and has been ever since
shewn as the miraculous memorial of the holy man. The story is that
"being provoked by the taunts and persecutions of his examiner, he
stamped with his foot upon a stone, and, looking up to heaven,
appealed to God for the justice of his cause, and prayed that there
might remain in that place a constant memorial of the wickedness and
injustice of his enemies." It is also stated that in 1732 a guest
sleeping alone in the Green Chamber at Smithells Hall saw an
apparition, in the dress of a minister with bands, and a book in his
hand. The ghost of Marsh, for so it was pronounced to be, disappeared
through the doorway, and on the owner of Smithells hearing the story,
he directed that divine service--long discontinued--should be resumed
at the hall chapel every Sunday.[26]

Then there are the blood stains on the floor at the outer door of the
Queen's apartments in Holyrood Palace, where Rizzio was murdered. Sir
Walter Scott has made these blood marks the subject of a jocular
passage in his introduction to the "Chronicles of the Canongate,"
where a Cockney traveller is represented as trying to efface them with
the patent scouring drops which it was his mission to introduce into
use in Scotland. In another of his novels--"The Abbot"--Sir Walter
Scott alludes to the Rizzio blood stains, and in his "Tales of a
Grand