ath old Giles Corey was meeting. It
seemed to Dulcibel afterwards, that if she had not been sustained by the
power of love, and a hopeful looking forward to other scenes, she must
have herself gone crazy during that and the other evil days that were
upon them. To some of the prisoners, the most fragile and sensitive
ones, even the hour of their execution seemed to come as a relief.
Anything, to get outside of those close dark cells--and to make an end
of it!

CHAPTER XXX.

Eight Legal Murders on Witch Hill.

A mile or so outside of the town of Salem, the ground rises into a rocky
ledge, from the top of which, to the south and the east and the west, a
vast expanse of land and sea is visible. You overlook the town; the two
rivers, or branches of the sea, between which the town lies; the thickly
wooded country, as it was then, to the south and west; and the wide,
open sea to the eastward.

Such a magnificent prospect of widespread land and water is seldom seen
away from the mountain regions; and, as one stands on the naked brow of
the hill, on a clear summer day, as the sunset begins to dye the west,
and gazes on the scene before and around him, he feels that the heavens
are not so very far distant, and as if he could almost touch with these
mortal hands the radiance and the glory.

The natural sublimity of this spot seems to have struck the Puritan
fathers of Salem, and looking around on its capabilities, they appear to
have come to the conclusion that of all places it was the one expressly
designed by the loving Father of mankind for--a gallows!

"Yes, the very spot for a gallows!" said the first settlers. "The very
spot!" echoed their descendants. "See, the wild "Heathen Salvages" can
behold it from far and near; the free spoken, law-abiding sailors can
descry it, far out at sea; and both know by this sign that they are
approaching a land of Christian civilization and of godly law!"

I think if I were puzzled for an emblem to denote the harsher and more
uncharitable side of the Puritan character, I should pick out this
gallows on Witch Hill near Salem, as being a most befitting one.

This was the spot where, as we have already related, approaching it from
the north, Master Raymond had his interview with jailer Foster. But that
was night, and it was so dark that Master Raymond had no idea of its
commanding so fine a view of both land and water. He had been in Boston
during the execution of poor Bridget B