“No shame whatever,” replied the old man, “but, on the contrary, the fittest thing that could have chanced. You are dependent on no private benevolence, nor on the good offices of any man now living, or who has lived these last three hundred years. This ancient establishment is for the support of poverty, misfortune, and age, and, according to the word of the founder, it serves him:--he was indebted to the beneficiaries, not they to him, for, in return for his temporal bequests, he asked their prayers for his soul’s welfare. He needed them, could they avail him; for this ponderous structure was built upon the founder’s mortal transgressions, and even, I may say, out of the actual substance of them. Sir Edward Redclyffe was a fierce fighter in the Wars of the Roses, and amassed much wealth by spoil, rapine, confiscation, and all violent and evil ways that those disturbed times opened to him; and on his death-bed he founded this Hospital for twelve men, who should be able to prove kindred with his race, to dwell here with a stipend, and pray for him; and likewise provision for a sick stranger, until he should be able to go on his way again.” “I shall pray for him willingly,” said Edward, moved by the pity which awaits any softened state of our natures to steal into our hearts. “Though no Catholic, I will pray for his soul. And that is his crest which you wear embroidered on his garment?” “It is,” said the old man. “You will see it carved, painted, embroidered, everywhere about the establishment; but let us give it the better and more reasonable interpretation;--not that he sought to proclaim his own pride of ancestry and race, but to acknowledge his sins the more manifestly, by stamping the emblem of his race on this structure of his penitence.” “And are you,” said Redclyffe, impressed anew by the quiet dignity of the venerable speaker, “in authority in the establishment?” “A simple beneficiary of the charity,” said the palmer; “one of the twelve poor brethren and kinsmen of the founder. Slighter proofs of kindred are now of necessity received, since, in the natural course of things, the race has long been growing scarce. But I had it in my power to make out a sufficient claim.” “Singular,” exclaimed Redclyffe, “you being an American!” [Endnote: 8.] “You remember me, then,” said the old man, quietly. “From the first,” said Edward, “although your image took the fantastic aspect of the bewilderment in which I then was; and now that I am in clearer state of mind, it seems yet stranger that you should be here. We two children thought you translated, and people, I remember, whispered dark hints about your fate.”