Note: Excerpt from Nathaniel Hawthorne's unfinished novel Septimius Felton; or, The Elixir of Life (1872). Hawthorne did not name the location in his story, but it was based on the real Smithills Hall in Lancashire, England that he visited in 1855. This abridged version of Hawthorne's embedded tale is from J.H. Ingram's The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain, which inserted the Hall's name where Hawthorne left it blank.