244.]), brought it definitely home to him. He had in 1837
thought of this: "A person to spend all his life and splendid talents,
in trying to achieve something totally impossible,--as, to make a
conquest over nature"; but the knowledge of an actual person who had
expected to live forever gave the scattered elements coherence. The way
in which other suggestions came into the plan is exceedingly curious.
The idea of a bloody footstep appears in the Note-Books in 1850: "The
print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a
town." By a singular corroboration, he encountered five years afterward
in England an actual bloody footprint, or a mark held to be such, at
Smithell's Hall in Lancashire. ("English Note-Books," Vol. I. April 7,
and August 25, 1855.) The parting request of his hostess there was that
he "should write a ghost-story for her house," and he observes that "the
legend is a good one." Only five days after first hearing it he makes a
note thus: "In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have
carried away with him a family secret, by which it was in his power, had
he so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret
he transmitted to his American progeny, by whom it is inherited
throughout all the intermediate generations. At last the hero of my
Romance comes to England, and finds that, by means of this secret, he
still has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family." This
clearly refers to something already rapidly taking shape in his mind,
and recalls at once the antique chest containing family papers, and the
estate in England waiting for an heir, of "Septimius.
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