alternate day until death put an end to his
sufferings." Rightly must this mode of torture have been named _peine
forte et dure_. On Gallows Hill three days later occurred the execution
of eight persons, the last so to suffer in the Colony. Nineteen people
in all were hanged, and one was pressed to death in Salem, but _there is
absolutely no foundation for the statement that some were burned_.

The revulsion that followed the cessation of the delusion was as marked
as was the precipitation that characterised the proceedings. Many of the
clergy concerned in the trials offered abject apologies, and Judge
Sewall, noblest of all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities
implicated in the madness, stood up on Fast Day before a great
congregation in the South Church, Boston, acknowledged his grievous
error in accepting "spectral evidence," and to the end of his life did
penance yearly in the same meeting-house for his part in the
transactions.

Not inappropriately the gloomy old house in which the fanatical Corwin
had his home is to-day given over to a dealer in antique furniture.
Visitors are freely admitted upon application, and very many in the
course of the year go inside to feast their eyes on the ancient
wainscoting and timbers. The front door and the overhanging roof are
just as in the time of the witches, and from a recessed area at the
back, narrow casements and excrescent stairways are still to be seen.
The original house had, however, peaked gables, with pineapples carved
in wood surmounting its latticed windows and colossal chimneys that
placed it unmistakably in the age of ruffs, Spanish cloaks, and long
rapiers.

LADY WENTWORTH OF THE HALL

On one of those pleasant long evenings, when the group of friends that
Longfellow represents in his "Tales of the Wayside Inn" had gathered in
the twilight about the cheery open fire of the house at Sudbury to tell
each other tales of long ago, we hear best the story of Martha Hilton.
We seem to catch the poet's voice as he says after the legend from the
Baltic has been alluringly related by the Musician:

"These tales you tell are, one and all,
Of the Old World,
Flowers gathered from a crumbling wall,
Dead leaves that rustle as they fall;
Let me present you in their stead
Something of our New England earth;
A tale which, though of no great worth,
Has still this merit, that it yields
A certain freshness of the fields,
A