were cut off and
came fluttering to the ground. Squire Hathorne says he never saw
anything more wonderful."

"Nonsense--it is all trickery!"

"Trickery? Why, my dear wife, the Squire has the feathers!--and he means
to send them at once to Master Cotton Mather by a special messenger, to
confute all the scoffers and unbelievers in Boston and Plymouth!"

A scornful reply was at the end of his wife's tongue but, on second
thought, she did not allow it to get any farther. Suppose that she did
convince her husband and Squire Hathorne that they had been grossly
deceived and imposed upon--and that Master Raymond's apparent
afflictions and spectral appearance were the result of skilful juggling,
what then? Would their enlightenment stop there? How about the pins that
the girls had concealed around their necks, and taken up with their
mouths? How about Mary Walcot secretly biting herself, and then
screaming out that good Rebecca Nurse had bitten her? How about the
little prints on the arms of the "afflicted girls," which they allowed
were made by the teeth of little Dorcas Good, that child not five years
old; and which Mistress Ann knew were made by the girls themselves? How
about the bites and streaks and bruises which she herself had shown as
the visible proof that the spectre of good Rebecca Nurse, then lying in
jail, was biting her and beating her with her chains? For Edward Putnam
had sworn: "I saw the marks both of bite and chains."

Perhaps it was safer to let Master Raymond's juggling go unexposed,
considering that she herself and the "afflicted girls" had done so very
much of it.

Therefore she said, "I have no faith in Master Raymond nevertheless; no
more than Moses had in King Pharaoh's sorcerers, when they did the very
same miracles before the king that he had done. I believe him now to be
a cunning and a very bad young man, and I think if I had been on the
spot, instead of his being at this very moment as I have very little
doubt, over at brother's, where they are congratulating each other on
the success of their unprincipled plans, Master Raymond would now be
lying in Salem jail."

"Probably you are correct, my dear," responded her husband meekly; "and
I think it not unlikely that Master Raymond may have thought the same,
and planned to keep you away--but it was evident to me, that if the
'afflicted girls' had taken one side or the other in the matter, it
would not have been yours. Why, even our own daughter