urged these charitably-disposed persons, the blood which fertilised the planted acorns was the blood of innocence wrongfully accused; and might be expected to carry with it a blessing rather than a curse. But hereupon the first party would reply that, whether Ursula were guilty or innocent of the crime charged against her, there could at all events be little doubt that she had taken her own life, and no doubt at all that the latest words she spoke to her husband were a deliberate curse. Now, it was a fact established upon Scriptural authority that the evil effect of a curse descends from father to son even unto the third and fourth generation--and this, whether the person who pronounced the anathema desired such an amplification of it or not: curses being like demons, which, once evoked, are not easily laid again. Upon the whole, therefore, it seemed probable that the Kildhurms would fare badly with their oak; yet it appears never to have occurred to anybody to try the effect of rooting the oak up, or cutting it down. But very likely nobody would have been found venturesome enough to act upon the idea, even had it been suggested. Such a proceeding, under the circumstances, would have been regarded as little better than murder, if not a good deal worse: for although Dante could scarcely have been familiar to the Kildhurm family, and still less to the peasantry of that epoch, a belief was widely prevalent that if an axe should be laid to the tree, or so much as a twig torn off it, blood would flow from the wound. And to such a pitch was this grotesque notion carried, that during many years the dead leaves and fallen boughs of the oak are said to have been religiously buried, as if they had been veritable human remains. I do not care to vouch for the truth of this legend, but that it should have existed even as a legend is significant of the serious light in which the whole matter was viewed. It was during Sir Ralph's lifetime that some local Mother Shipton produced the famous prophetic verses which were ever thenceforward quoted when the Oak and its attributes came up for discussion; and as to the true meaning of which a great deal of speculation and dispute were rife. What may have been the merits of the question can be inferred only from the sequel; but meanwhile it is certain that the prophecy itself so far appealed to the pride or interests of the Kildhurm family, that they caused it to be engraved upon a silver disc, and hung round the bole of the tree by a silver chain. There is no evidence of this chain and the disc ever having been removed; and the story goes that they were gradually overgrown by the substance of the tree; until, by the time the prophecies were ripe for fulfilment, the silver record of them had disappeared. The verses, according to the most trustworthy accounts, ran somewhat as follows:--