pleasant tone
with which many wives are apt to receive their liege lords upon such
unpleasant occasions. "Do get into the house at once. You will catch
your death of cold, I know. And such a mess your clothes will be! But I
only wonder you are not killed--trying to ride a mad witch's horse like
that is."

The minister made no reply. The situation transcended words. And did not
allow even of sympathy, as his visitors evidently thought--not at least
until he got on some clean and dry clothes. So they simply shook their
heads, and took their course homewards. While the bedraggled and
dripping Master Parris made his way to the house wiping the water and
mud from his face with his wife's handkerchief, and stopping to shake
himself well, before he entered the door, lest, as his wife said, "he
should spoil everything in his chamber."

Abigail Williams, when she went to see Mistress Ann Putnam that night,
had a marvelous tale to tell; which in the course of the next day, went
like wildfire through the village, growing still more and more marvelous
as it went.

Abigail had seen, as I have already said, the spectre of a witch goading
the furious animal with a pitchfork. When the horse tore down the lane,
it came to the little brook and of course could not cross it--for a
witch cannot cross running water. Therefore, in its new access of fury,
it sprang into the pond--and threw off the minister. Abigail further
declared that then, dashing down the lane it came to the gate which shut
it off from the road, and took the gate in a flying leap. But the animal
never came down again. It was getting quite dark then, but she could
still plainly see that a witch was upon its back, belaboring it with a
broomstick. And she knew very well who that witch was. It was the
"spectre" of Dulcibel Burton--for it had a scarlet bodice on, just such
as Dulcibel nearly always wore. They two--the mare and its rider--went
off sailing up into the sky, and disappeared behind a black cloud. And
Abigail was almost certain that just as they reached the cloud, there
was a low rumbling like thunder.

It was noticeable that every time Abigail told this story, she
remembered something that she had not before thought of; until in the
course of a week or two, there were very few stories in the "Arabian
Nights" that could surpass it in marvelousness.

As the mare had not returned to her old stable at Goodman Buckley's, and
could not be heard of in any other dire