al spring of soft
and pleasant water--a rare treasure on the sea-girt peninsula where the
Puritan settlement was made--had early induced Matthew Maule to build a
hut, shaggy with thatch, at this point, although somewhat too remote
from what was then the centre of the village. In the growth of the
town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by
this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a
prominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible claims to the
proprietorship of this and a large adjacent tract of land, on the
strength of a grant from the legislature. Colonel Pyncheon, the
claimant, as we gather from whatever traits of him are preserved, was
characterized by an iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, on the
other hand, though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of what
he considered his right; and, for several years, he succeeded in
protecting the acre or two of earth which, with his own toil, he had
hewn out of the primeval forest, to be his garden ground and homestead.
No written record of this dispute is known to be in existence. Our
acquaintance with the whole subject is derived chiefly from tradition.
It would be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust, to venture a decisive
opinion as to its merits; although it appears to have been at least a
matter of doubt, whether Colonel Pyncheon's claim were not unduly
stretched, in order to make it cover the small metes and bounds of
Matthew Maule. What greatly strengthens such a suspicion is the fact
that this controversy between two ill-matched antagonists--at a period,
moreover, laud it as we may, when personal influence had far more
weight than now--remained for years undecided, and came to a close only
with the death of the party occupying the disputed soil. The mode of
his death, too, affects the mind differently, in our day, from what it
did a century and a half ago. It was a death that blasted with strange
horror the humble name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it seem
almost a religious act to drive the plough over the little area of his
habitation, and obliterate his place and memory from among men.

Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft.
He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which should teach
us, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and those who
take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to
all the passi