274

The jail trembled to its very centre, 301

Nought was to be seen, save massacre and pillage on
every side, 310

The resolute father continued to fire as he retreated, 320

Lieut.-Gov. Stoughton, 330

George Waters cut two stout sticks for crutches, 353

"Charles Stevens, do you seek death?" 371

Cotton Mather, 380

Witches' Hill, 382

Map of the period, 306

THE WITCH OF SALEM.

CHAPTER I.

THE MAN WITH THE BOOK.

Through shades and solitudes profound,
The fainting traveler wends his way;
Bewildering meteors glare around,
And tempt his wandering feet astray.
--Montgomery.

[Illustration: "Take it away!"]

The autumnal evening was cool, dark and gusty. Storm-clouds were
gathering thickly overhead, and the ground beneath was covered with
rustling leaves, which, blighted by the early frosts, lay helpless and
dead at the roadside, or were made the sport of the wind. A solitary
horseman was slowly plodding along the road but a few miles from the
village of Salem. In truth he was so near to the famous Puritan
village, that, through the hills and intervening tree-tops, he could
have seen the spires of the churches had he raised his melancholy eyes
from the ground. The rider was not a youth, nor had he reached middle
age. His face was handsome, though distorted with agony. Occasionally he
pressed his hand to his side as if in pain; but maugre pain, weariness,
or anguish, he pressed on, admonished by the lengthening shadows of the
approach of night. Turning his great, sad, brown eyes at last to where
the road wound about the valley across which the distant spires of Salem
could be seen, he sighed:

"Can I reach it to-night? I must!"

Salem, that strange village to which the horseman was wending his way,
in October, 1684, was a different village from the Salem of to-day. It
is a town familiar to every American student, and, having derived its
fame more from its historic recollections than from its commerce or
industries, its name carries us back two centuries, suggesting the faint
a