It was a rough march of more than two miles through the woods; but they relieved each other from time to time, and never ceased advancing. A solemn dirge moved above them, from arch to arch of the dark forest, as if spirits in the air were bearing, with funeral chants, some brother spirit to its tomb. They came upon the clearing at last, and saw the green corn waiting in vain forever the hand of him who had planted it. As they reached the cabin, a fox yelped at them from the edge of the little spring, and then fled away into the gloom of the wilderness. The windows had been in part broken, doubtless by wayfaring boys; but the panes which remained in place seemed to glare at them with fitful, ghastly reflections. Mark shuddered as he laid down his sepulchral load amid this bodeful scene ; and even Poquannum muttered, in his own language, some hasty words, which sounded like an incantation. They succeeded in forcing open one of the windows and lifting the body through it into the cabin. Finding a spade inside and an old hatchet, they tore up the floor in one corner, and commenced digging a grave. After two hours of labor in the half darkness, it was finished; and then, putting Mark's jacket upon More, they laid him in his sanctuary; while Poquannum drew the long knife from his belt, and placed it on the dead man's breast, saying: "This for the strong sagamore; this for the great hunting grounds."

Mark made no objection to what seemed to him a heathenish, and yet a most affectionate action. They covered up the pale hunter, replaced the flooring and left the cabin. As it was now past midnight, the settler invited his comrade to go home with him and share his hospitality. "No," said Poquannum ; "me sleep in woods-much grief."

Then, with a peculiar glitter in his eye, he asked Mark where Sheriff Herrick lived, and made him describe exactly the dwelling of that energetic officer of justice. He offered no explanations, and, having learned what he wanted, shook hands with the young fellow, and disappeared among the cedars. That night, Herrick's barn was burned to the ground; and the sheriff himself, while running about the flames, felt something strike his thick bearskin cap. He took it off, and found it transfixed by a

slender arrow. He darted instantly into his house, and remained there, a good deal discomposed, until the arrival of some of the neighbors. The next day, diligent search was made after Poquannum, for many miles round, but without so much as hearing of his passage.

CHAPTER XXI.

UNDER the impulse of a vigorous constitution, Rachel had vibrated from the extremity of her delirium back to a lucid mind. But the fever still reached eager hands at her; and more than once she was again on the point of reeling into utter frenzy. As she lay one night, tossing hotly from side to side, a temptation of cool dark waters, at the bottom of the garden well, haunted her incessantly. The house was still, and her overwearied watcher had fallen asleep. She rose noiselessly, and, walking in the unsteady strength of fever, passed down stairs and into the yard. From a full bucket, balanced on the wooden curb, she drank until the fire in her veins was followed by a tremor, luxurious even in its deathlike chillness. In her feebleness she let the dripping vessel slip, and drenched her night-dress from her feet to her shoulders. She tottered back to her room, flung herself on her bed, and fell into the calmest slumber that had held her for a week.

Thanks, probably, to this hydropathic application, the fever rose to a crisis the next day, and then sank rapidly into a healthy subsidence. No one knew what had produced the fortunate change; for Rachel, with that childish cunning which often attends sickness, kept her own counsel, and reserved the well-bucket as a sweet, sure resource in case of the malady's return; often passing hours in thinking of it, as a traveler remembers the oasis to which he once escaped from burning deserts.

Slowly and with uncertain steps the knowledge of her father's death stole upon her. The fever, with its frenzy and its weakness, had been a gentle friend which, in the mildest of all ways, broke unto her the evil tidings. So feeble were both mind and body now, that she only half felt the agony of her bereavement, even when she perfectly knew it. She wept at times, but calmly, with no more possibility of despairing

madness. Oh, sickness! oh, pain! oh, death! blandest of lovers are ye all to humanity, although ye seem to it so terribly cruel!

She was around the house in a month; pale indeed, feeble and sorrowing; but not as one without hope. During the convalescence, as during the height of her illness, Mark and his mother were always near when she needed them. Mark ran of errands, brought her fruit and flowers; his mother watched the invalid, made gruel for her, read to her. The young fellow soon contrived to get sight of More's letter. Of course he looked grave, very grave, indeed, over it; but he could not help being pleased with its advice on the score of that marriage; and he did what most other young men of any spirit would have done in the circumstances; that is, he urged quietly, but very earnestly, the policy of an early wedding. Mrs. Bowson soberly acquiesced; and even Rachel expressed no serious opposition. She used to run across the garden very often now, and take supper at the Stanton's-much oftener, indeed, than Mark came to her uncle's, and that for divers excellent reasons. One of these reasons was, that at home she was persecuted by frequent visits from Elder Noyse. This guilty, this miserable man, had fallen altogether from his first estate of fair Christianity, and had become an utter hypocrite-cowardly and wretched, it is true, but none the less knavish and perverse. It is probable that he scarcely ever prayed now except in public; for prayer must have grown to him an insupportable self-accusation. He preached almost altogether against witchcraft, or those grosser sins of which alone he felt that he was not guilty. Yet he raved sometimes at his own apostasy, and wanted to curse Rachel, Mark, and the dead More, as the stumbling-blocks over which he had fallen.

When he came to visit the girl, it Iwas with a face of brazen sanctimoniousness which visored the corruption within. He was like that dead knight of the ballad, who walked about in complete armor, attended feasts and tournaments, and seemed to be living even while the worms were feeding upon him. Rachel could not refuse to see him; he was the shepherd of souls; it was his duty to attend on the sick; it was her duty to hear his counsels and

exhortations. The recollection of all his former repulses seemed to have faded away in the intimacy which he had wrung out of her present circumstances. He was as fascinated as ever, and about as frank in showing his fascination. On her part their interviews were hours of annoyance, fear, and almost loathing. She was relieved somewhat at discovering, little by little, that her aunt understood and sympathized with her feelings. In fact, Mrs. Bowson liked Mark very sincerely; and, at all events, had no idea of asking Rachel to break a betrothal, even to please an elder; while, as she understood better the object of Noyse's pretendedly pastoral visits, she began to regard him with a quiet growing disfavor. But not even to her, as yet, did Rachel dare hint her sombre suspicions that the minister's soul was stained with the blood of her father and of Martha Carrier.

The other reason why it was not pleasant for Mark to visit the Bowsons was, that the deacon was very bearish to him, and tried to snub him on all possible occasions. This poor man, naturally so kindly and cheerful, had grown surly with superstition, had lost flesh, and was almost always melancholy. He constantly hung around Noyse for crumbs of comfort or counsel; had, in fact, become a mere dog to him, and wagged his tail or barked as he directed. He abused Mark as a Sadduceean opposer of the law and of the elders. He said there was no depending on these young men; for they might take to dicing, drinking, swearing, at any day; and he was not at all sure but that Mark had already gamed it with Beelzebub. But Pastor Noyse was a safe person to trust one's soul with-Shepherd Noyse would be a famous guide through this valley of death.

Sometimes he tried to carry the match by snarling; sometimes by fawning, whining and downright whimpering. He plagued her insupportably, too, by his conversation about her father. "Brother More! oh, Brother More!" he would repeat, moaning and shaking his head. "What a dreadful thing! It isn't the hanging, so much; it's that woeful sorcery. What a horrible thing

to sell one's soul to the devil!"

son.

"The court settled that beyond dubitation. I've talked to Elder Noyse about it, time and again; and all he could do was to groan; time and again I've heard him: he hadn't a word of comfort for me."

Rachel generally ended such dialogues by covering up her face and bursting into tears. Occasionally then the old kindness of Bowson's nature would light up, and he would try to console the poor heart that he had tortured. Two or three times, indeed, he pulled out his small brown handkerchief, well stained with snuff, and wept copiously in her company. It was pitiable to see how the once brisk, and generally sensible man had been pushed by superstition into a premature dotage.

He still kept that troublesome little monkey, Sarah Carrier, and listened to her chatterings as if they were the song of Deborah. He neither controlled her, nor allowed her to be controlled; and it seemed as if the family would be harried out of the house by her numberless pranks; only now and then the girl relapsed of herself into quiet, wearied by an unchecked monotony of mischief. Mrs. Bowson afterwards calculated that £30 would not cover what Sarah cost them in the way of burnt clothing, torn linen, broken crockery and damaged furniture. Even the deacon sometimes lent a hand to swell this list of household expenses extraordinary. Having read how Luther threw an inkstand at the devil with good effect, he watched his opportunity, and let drive with a very large one, at a certain spectre which was punching and pricking the unlucky Sarah. A sharp crash followed: a looking-glass scattered in fragments; and the crimson rug underneath received a grimy drenching. The girl screamed that Goody Barker's face was wounded, and her cap and gown stained in like manner; upon which the deacon darted out of the house, and ran half a mile to catch the hag before she could wash herself and otherwise repair damages. Goody Barker sat in her door spinning, her wrinkled old phiz unscratched, and her cap and short-gown as clean as snow. He stared at her wildly, shook his head at her devilish cunning, then walked home short-winded, and with a monstrous sideache. "Fiddle-deedee!" said the Goody, as she gazed after him in wonder. "What a plague possesses the deacon?"

And off she went to the neighbors, declaring that "if ever a man looked like a wizard, John Bowson was that man. He'd got to be monstrous goggle-eyed, that was sarten."

Sarah, in the mean time, was explaining to the deacon that, "Beelzebub had healed Goody Barker's face, and washed her gownd with popish holy water."

Goody Bowson often suffered from the devils, as, on account of her age and imbecility, she richly deserved. Chairs were twitched away from under her, letting her down upon the floor in a style which made her antique bones rattle, and shook her out of shape for several minutes. Sarah then had convulsions, which rolled her backwards and forwards over the old lady, to the imminent risk of smothering her or squeezing out her brains. A few minutes afterward, the little wretch had some pins to vomit up, or some fork to pull out of her ears. These manifestations generally happened in the evening, which was a particularly favorable time to imps of darkness, because the economy of the period rarely allowed candles.

When the devils were not plaguing Goody Bowson, and when nobody would read the "Remarkables" to her, she led, perhaps, the calmest existence in Salem; for, curiously enough, she took no interest in the present witch manifestations, and was only disturbed by those that had disturbed her years ago. She dozed a good deal in her great chair, occasionally waking up to mumble a psalm-tune. She went to bed when the hens did, and slept all night as calmly as they. She seemed to be almost equally unconscious with those feathered bipeds, of the human tragedy which was enacting about her; and certainly no contrast could be more striking than the difference between her stagnant life and the surrounding tempest of wrath, lamentation, and horror. Surely she was not much to be pitied; idiocy at that time was, in some sort, a blessing.

Frisk, all this while, was a more unhappy dog than ever. He was supernaturally tormented to such a degree, that he used to run from Sarah Carrier as from Old Hundred. He was either keener-eyed, or more of a Sadducee than the rest of the family, for he did not believe a whit that it was Beelzebub who teazed him; he was dogmatically

persuaded that it was nobody but that sly Sarah. He kept perpetually on the lookout for her, and, at her approach, either scampered off with his tail between his legs, or sought a sneaking refuge under chairs and tables. Before whining to be let into the house, he always took the precaution to sniff at the doorcrack; and if by this means he discovered her presence within, he made no whimpering request for admittance, but quietly packed himself away to the fields or the stable. Nothing could be more absurd than the obstinacy with which this ridiculous brute held that Sarah was the only witch who troubled the peace of the household. He was evidently an atheist, if not an entire disbeliever in the devil, and, doubtless, deserved hanging as much as any of the wretches on whom Stoughton had passed sentence.

In spite of some suspicions which Rachel had concerning Sarah, and in spite of the annoyances which the child's tricks constantly occasioned, she treated her with gentleness. "We are both orphans," she used to say. "You have lost your mother, and I have lost my father, both of us in the same way. We'll be good friends together. Byand-by, when we get out of all these troubles, and I can keep house, then you shall live with me." With which kind of talk Sarah was very much pleased, and repaid it by pestering Rachel as little as possible. Nor did she play many tricks directly on Mrs. Bowson; only it would not do for that notable housekeeper to set her at any kind of work; for in such a case the devils interfered, and brought mugs and platters to swift destruction. Of course the good woman was annoyed by these impoverishing occurrences; but, perhaps, after all, they served her a very friendly turn. The upsetting of a table would, sometimes, startle her out of woeful recollections of her murdered brother; and the smell of the deacon's best beaver, roasting on the kitchen fire, reminded her to be thankful that fate had as yet spared the deacon. She was a sauctified spirit, and the angels watched over her. The little plagues of life, instead of aggravating her great burden, only helped to lighten it. One reflection, however, filled her with unmitigated sorrow. She was thoroughly converted from the witchcraft credences now, and believed that the excitement

had been, from the first, one pure and atrocious delusion; a tragedy as barren in result as it had been frightful in incident-without meaning, without provocation, and without benefit. She remembered how she had sometimes spoken earnest words in its defense, and wept bitterly over those utterances of a mistaken sincerity. The thought made her very humble, and very forgiving toward those who had believed more fervently, and who still believed. They, on their part, attributed her meek silence to a consciousness that her family had deserved its great affliction, so that they were inclined to comfort her patronizingly, and to warn her with severity. Mrs. Curwin and Mrs. Parris met her one day as she was walking homeward with Rachel. "Well, Mistress Bowson, how do you feel after your tribulations?" said the tall, prim lady of the justice. Rachel gasped, and then compressed her lips, while poor sister Ann helplessly burst into tears. "What! not subdued yet?" cried Mrs. Curwin, in reproachful amazement. "Well, truly," remarked the elder's wife, "it do seem like a waste of the Lord's precious chastisements to pour 'em out on us ungrateful creeters." Mrs. Bowson was going to listen with her accustomed resignation; but Rachel haughtily bridled up, and bidding the ladies goodafternoon, pulled her aunt away.

The terror was still at its height in the colony, notwithstanding that, for the present, there were no more courts nor executions. The reaction against Juggernaut had begun; but it was as yet very limited and very feeble, although it grew stronger when that respectable gentleman, Justice Dudley Bradstreet, of Andover, was committed. Apropos of this circumstance, Elder Higginson preached anew against the delusion; said he feared that the prosecutions had been a bloody mistake, and lamented that he had not withstood them boldly from the beginning.

Mark, also, was not so occupied with his private affairs but that he could spare time and thought to the championship which More had left him. He stoutly defended the dead hunter's character from the charge of witchcraft. To the epithet of Sadducee he retorted by calling his opponents the Pharisees; and this sarcasm, being a biblical one, had a good run, and greatly enraged those at whom it was directed. He wrote a

memorial also, which he afterwards presented to the General Court, and caused to be printed at his own expense. Cotton Mather is very severe upon him for this, and calls him "a bejesuited varlet, and a choak-weed of Christianity."

At an earlier day, Mark would have suffered for these impertinences; but Giant Witchcraft was getting a little stiff in the joints now, like Giant Pope in the Pilgrim's Progress. Even Elder Hale of Beverly showed fight when he found that the afflicted were unreasonably determined on hanging his excellent wife. "Brethren," said he, in his better-late-than-never sermon, 66 we cannot be too cautious in matters of this importance. In cases of witchcraft, all proceedings thereabout ought to be managed with an exceeding tenderness toward those that may be complained of; especially if they have been formerly of an unblemished reputation. It is an undoubted and a notorious thing that a demon may, by God's permission, appear even to ill purposes, in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous person; nor can we esteem alterations in the sufferers, made by a look or touch of the accusers, to be an infallible evidence of guilt; but frequently liable to

be abused by Satan's legerdemains. I know not whether some remarkable affronts unto the devils, by our disbelieving of those testimonies whose whole force and strength is from them alone, may not put a period to the progress of a direful calamity, begun upon us in the accusation of so many persons, whereof, I hope, some are yet clear from the great transgression laid to their charge."

Sensible, cautious Elder Hale, when it came the turn of his own family! I honor him for setting store by Mrs. Hale's neck; and only wish that he had been equally careful not to dress chokers for other people's windpipes.

The General Court met in October, and discussed lengthily the rights and reasons of Juggernaut. The representatives did not quite fulfill the unfortunate More's anticipations. They refused to condemn the late trials; they adopted English law as authority for future prosecutions; they, however, delayed the legal colonial court until January, 1693; and that was all the comfort that the Assembly of Massachusetts could conscientiously grant to Salem. So onward crept the autumn towards winter, in a state of mind sufficiently dismal and hopeless.

As

S Putnam has decided opinions and expresses them strongly, it does not wonder that dissent from those opinions should be often stated as strongly. Nor, as its readers are well aware, does it quarrel with any criticism. But gross misstatements of fact, intended to injure the reputation of the Magazine, challenge attention, and shall always promptly receive it; and we choose this place as more conspicuous than the general" Editorial Notes." For we are anxious that nobody should entertain enemies unawares, nor suddenly discover that the Monthly which was taken in by the reader, for its general interest and value to him, should have taken the reader in, by treating flippantly or falsely topics which are justly and universally precious.

Let us say, frankly, as we are about to comment upon the misstatement of a

"religious" newspaper, that we always listen to what the " religious" press says of us, with curiosity and interest; for we know, of course, that, as a class, the 66 religious" newspapers are, at once, more hampered by the peculiarities of position, and, probably, more influential than any other. Of the quality of that influence, we do not speak. But no thoughtful observer of the times and the country fails to see that, in their various ways, the "religious" newspapers "exploit" the religious sentiment of the community; and that, not infrequently, when manly and fair argument is wanting, they have recourse to the most dangerous and odious of all weapons in discussion-appeals to sectarianism and superstition. Are we quite wrong, in saying, that just what Archbishop Hughes did at the Tabernacle, when he denounced the