Publisher's Synopsis
The legend of a bloody foot leaving its imprint where it passed, which figures so prominently in the following fiction, was brought to Hawthorne's notice on a visit to Smithell's Hall, Lancashire, England. Hawthorne went there by invitation, where the lady of the manor asked him "to write a ghost-story for her house;" and he observes in his notes, "the legend is a good one." He wrote in his English journal: --
"God himself cannot compensate us for being born for any period short of eternity. All the misery endured here constitutes a claim for another life, and still more all the happiness; because all true happiness involves something more than the earth owns, and needs something more than a mortal capacity for the enjoyment of it."
-- from George Parsons Lathrop's Introduction
