You now come to Yewdale Bridge, and, crossing it, enter Church Conistone; but here I wish you to turn off the road, and passing between some houses on your left, walk down the beckside for about 150 yards, and you reach a very primitive-looking bridge, formed of two huge flags laid upon piers of ancient and substantial mason-work, and named, with manifest propriety, “Bannockstone bridge.” It was not this I brought you out of your way to see; but I want you to bestow especial notice upon a large stone lying in the beck-bottom, just to the lower side of the bridge. Though it is covered by from two to three feet of water, Yewdale beck is so pure that you have no difficulty in discovering that the otherwise flat surface of this stone is interrupted by a ridge or elevation, some inches in height, occupying one of its corners, and in the edge of that elevation nearest to you is the deep, perfect, and unmistakeable imprint of a very large heel. Convinced, from the time I first noticed it, that some story might be ferretted out, to account for the production of this large heel-mark, I took considerable pains, for which I expect your gratitude, to collect the following facts in explanation of its traditionary origin, and now, without amplification or comment, I retail them for your satisfaction. [Sidenote: FRUITS OF REPENTANCE.] In those pious and enlightened times, when the profession and practice of witchcraft were so common that very few women could grow old and ugly, especially if they were also poor, without being suspected of having sold their immortal part to the Father of evil, a very old woman whose name has not been preserved, but the certainty of whose commerce with the devil no one ever doubted, dwelt in a hut upon the point of land which runs into the lake near the mouth of this brook. After practising the ordinary routine of a witchwoman’s life for several years, it is said that, as the time drew near for the fulfilment of her short-sighted bargain, she was seized with terror and remorse, and resolved to try whether she might not find a means of nullifying the agreement and evading payment of the fearful penalty to be exacted from her in return for the evil power with which her master had endued her old age; and, with this object, she visited a holy man, one of the Monks of Saint Mary of Furness, who was stationed at the place now called Bank Ground, which stands pleasantly upon the opposite side of the lake. He, when made aware of all the bearings of the case, offered some hope of redemption from the consequences of her contract, on the conditions of teetotal abstinence from any future indulgence in the [Sidenote: A MIRACLE.] evil art, _abnegation_ of the devil, his works and devices, and a course of penance so severe and protracted, as to make the penitent witch think the cure almost as bad as the disease; but concern for “her pore sole,” as Winifred Jenkins pathetically designates it, determined her to accept of Father Brian’s terms,