FRONTISPIECE.

"THE LORD KNOWS THAT I HAVEN'T HURT THEM" 68

MARCHED FROM JAIL FOR THE LAST TIME 208

CHAPTER I.

Dulcibel Burton.

In the afternoon of a sunny Autumn day, nearly two hundred years ago, a
young man was walking along one of the newly opened roads which led into
Salem village, or what is now called Danvers Centre, in the then
Province of Massachusetts Bay.

The town of Salem, that which is now the widely known city of that name,
lay between four and five miles to the southeast, on a tongue of land
formed by two inlets of the sea, called now as then North and South
Rivers. Next to Plymouth it is the oldest town in New England, having
been first settled in 1626. Not till three years after were Boston and
Charlestown commenced by the arrival of eleven ships from England. It is
a significant fact, as showing the hardships to which the early settlers
were exposed, that of the fifteen hundred persons composing this Boston
expedition, two hundred died during the first winter. Salem has also the
honor of establishing the first New England church organization, in
1629, with the Reverend Francis Higginson as its pastor.

Salem village was an adjunct of Salem, the town taking in the adjacent
lands for the purpose of tillage to a distance of six miles from the
meeting-house. But in the progress of settlement, Salem village also
became entitled to a church of its own; and it had one regularly
established at the date of our story, with the Reverend Samuel Parris as
presiding elder or minister.

There had been many bickerings and disputes before a minister could be
found acceptable to all in Salem village. And the present minister was
by no means a universal favorite. The principal point of contention on
his part was the parsonage and its adjacent two acres of ground. Master
Parris claimed that the church had voted him a free gift of these; while
his opponents not only denied that it had been done, but that it
lawfully could be done. This latter view was undoubtedly correct; for
the parsonage land was a gift to the church, for the perpetual use of
its pastor, whosoever he might be. But Master Parris would not listen to
reason on this subject, and was not inclined to look kindly upon the men
who steadfastly opposed him.

The inhabitants of Salem village were a goodly as well as godly people,
but owing to these church differences about th