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, or sweeper, 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 the
"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 holy orders and became renowned for his
ascetic sanctity.
There were other circumstances that kept up the impression produced by
these two singular facts I have just mentioned.
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