Next, the legend says, that Sir Forrester was struck with horror at what he had done ... and fled from his old Hall, and was gone full many a day.  But all the while he was gone there was the mark of a bloody footstep impressed upon the stone door-step of the Hall....  The legend says that wherever Sir Forrester went, in his wanderings about the world, he left a bloody track behind him....  Once he went to the King’s Court, and, there being a track up to the very throne, the King frowned upon him, so that he never came there any more.  Nobody could tell how it happened; his foot was not seen to bleed, only there was the bloody track behind him....

At last this unfortunate lord deemed it best to go back to his own Hall, where, living among faithful old servants born in the family, he could hush the matter up better than elsewhere....  So home he came, and there he saw the bloody track on the door-step, and dolefully went into the Hall, and up the stairs, an old servant ushering him into his chamber, and half a dozen others following him behind, gazing, shuddering, pointing with quivering fingers, looking horror-stricken in one another’s pale faces....

By and by he vanished from the old Hall, but not by death; for, from generation to generation, they say that a bloody track is seen around that house, and sometimes it is traced up into the chambers, so fresh that you see he must have passed a short time before.

This is the legend of the Bloody Footstep, which I myself have seen at the Hall door.

LI

THE GHOSTLY WARRIORS OF WORMS

“The Phantom World”

The abbot of Ursperg, in his Chronicle, year 1123, says that in the territory of Worms they saw during many days a multitude of armed men, on foot and on horseback, going and coming with great noise, like people who are going to a solemn assembly.  Every day they marched, towards the hour of noon, to a mountain, which appeared to be their place of rendezvous.  Someone in the neighbourhood, bolder than the rest, having guarded himself with the sign of the cross, approached one of these armed men, conjuring him in the name of God, to declare the meaning of this army, and their design.  The soldier or phantom replied, “We are not what you imagine; we are neither vain phantoms nor true soldiers, we are the spirits of those who were killed on this spot a long time ago.  The arms and horses which you behold are the instruments of our punishment, as they were of our sins.  We are all on fire, though you can see nothing about us which appears inflamed.”  It is said that they remarked in this company the Count Emico, who had been killed a few years before, and who declared that he might be extricated from that state by alms and prayers.

LII

THE WANDERING JEW IN ENGLAND

“Notes and Queries”