evening, Sir!" and she left the room.

Jethro had not expected such a quiet, but effective answer. He sat
twirling his thumbs, for awhile, hoping that she would return. But
realizing at last that she would not, he took his departure in a
towering anger. Of course this was the last of his visits. But Dulcibel
had made a deadly enemy.

It was unfortunate, for the maiden already had many who disliked her
among the young people of the village. She was a superior person for one
thing, and "gave herself airs," as some said. To be superior, without
having wealth or an acknowledged high social position, is always to be
envied, and often to be hated. Then again, Dulcibel dressed with more
richness and variety of costume than was usual in the Puritan villages.
This set many of the women, both young and old, against her. Her scarlet
bodice, especially, was a favorite theme for animadversion; some even
going so far as to call her ironically "the scarlet woman." It is
curious how unpopular a perfectly amiable, sweet-tempered and
sweet-tongued maiden may often become, especially with her own sex,
because of their innate feeling that she is not, in spite of all her
courteous endeavors, really one of them. It is an evil day for the swan
when she finds herself the only swan among a large flock of geese.

Dulcibel's antecedents also were not as orthodox as they might be. Her
mother, it was granted, was "pious," and of a "godly" connection; but
her father, as he had himself once said, "had no religion to speak of."
He had further replied to the question, asked him when he first came to
Salem, as to whether he was "a professor of religion," that he was "only
a sea captain, and had no other profession." And a certain freedom of
thought characterized Dulcibel, that she could scarcely have derived
from her pious mother. In fact, it was something like the freedom of the
winds and of the clouds, blowing where they liked; and had been probably
caught up by her father in his many voyages over the untrammeled seas.

At first Dulcibel had been rather impressed by the sermons of Master
Parris and Master Noyes and the other ministers, to the effect that
Satan was making a deadly assault upon the "saints," in revenge for
their interference with his hitherto undisputed domination of the new
world. But the longer she thought about it, the more she was inclined to
adopt Joseph Putnam's theory, that his sister-in-law and niece and the
other "afflicted