wounded stranger some years before. Often had he thought of that melancholy man and the strange resemblance he bore to Cora's father.

"Where is he now, and what has been his fate?" he thought, as he strolled toward the spring. Suddenly he paused and looked toward the brooklet. Well might he be startled. The negro servants, John and Tituba, were engaged in some of their diabolical incantations in the stream. Kneeling by the water's side, each bent until their foreheads touched the water, then, starting up, they murmured strange fetich words in their diabolical African tongue. John had a whip in his hand, with which he lashed the water furiously, and uttered his eldritch shrieks. Charles paused, spell-bound, hardly knowing what to make of the strange conduct of the negroes, and wishing he could lay the whip about their own bare shoulders.

During a lull in their performance, he heard a rapid tread of feet coming toward the spring, and beheld his mother, followed by Cora. No sooner did the negroes see them, than they left off lashing the water with their whips and, with the most wild, unearthly screams, bounded from the spot and ran off into the woods.

Mrs. Stevens and Cora both screamed, and were about to fly, when Charles emerged from his place of concealment, saying:

"Don't run away, I am here."

"Charles! Charles! what were they doing?" Mrs. Stevens asked.

"It was some of their wild incantations,” he answered. "The knaves deserve to have a good whip laid about their bare backs."

"Truly, they do. Why did they fly at our approach?" asked Mrs. Stevens.

"Perhaps the foolish creatures thought their spell was broken," Charles answered.

"I am so affrighted," said Cora, shuddering. She was growing dizzy, and Mrs. Stevens said: "Catch her, or she will fall."

He bore her to the spring and, kneeling by the brook, bathed the fair white brow, until she opened her eyes and murmured:

"Mother!"

Many times afterward, both mother and son, recalling the incident, wondered why she, for the first time, had called for her mother. At all other times and on all other occasions, the maid persistently denied that she knew aught of her mother.

A few days later, her father, who had mysteriously and unceremoniously disappeared, returned. No one asked any questions as to where he had been, or what business had engaged his attention. He gave the widow some golden guineas for her care of his child. That night Charles came acci

dentally upon the father and daughter in the garden. They were sitting in a green bower, partially screened from view, so he approached to within a few paces without being seen.

"Father, have you heard anything more?" she asked.

"No."

"Nor have you seen any one from there?"

"Do you suppose danger is over?"

"Danger never will be over, until there has been a revolution in the government."

Long did Charles ponder over those mysterious words, and ask himself what they meant. He again conferred with his mother, and when she had heard all he had to tell, she was constrained to ask: "Who are they?"

Mrs. Stevens, like her son, was too well bred to pry into the secrets of her guests. A few days later Mr. Waters again disappeared and was not seen for two months.

It was at the close of a sultry day in July that Mr. John Louder and his neighbor Bly were returning from Boston in a cart. As usual, their conversation was of the solemn kind, characteristic of the Puritan. The many mysteries in nature and out of nature formed their principal topic. Each had had his long, ardent conflict with sin and Satan.

Each was a firm believer in personal devils and legions of devils. The spirits of the air were thought to be all about them, even at that very

moment.

“Neighbor Bly, I believe that she is a witch,” said Louder.

"Verily, even so do I."

"If the magistrates would so adjudge her, she would, according to the laws, be hung."

"Truly she would. I saw her shape again last night."

"Did you?"

'Yes, she came to my bed and did grievously torment me, by sitting for fully two hours upon my chest."

"Why did you not call upon the name of God, and she would have gone?"

"Fain would I have done so, had it been possible; but her appearance took from me the power of speech, and I was dumb. She sat upon me, grinning at me, and she said:

"Would ye speak if

ye could?'

"Then at last a yellow bird came in at the window and whispered some words in her ear, and the shape flew away with a black man."

"Verily, neighbor Bly, you have been grievously tormented; yet little worse is your case than my My cattle are bewitched and die. The

own.

The

witches hurl balls at them from any distance, which strike them, and they shrink and die at once. other morn I had salted my cows, when one suddenly showed strange signs of illness and soon fell on her side and did die. Neighbor Towne, who witnessed it, said the poor beast was struck with a witch ball. He says they gather the hair from the back of the afflicted beasts and, making a ball of it from the spittle of their mouths, blow their breath upon it and hurl it any distance to an object. The object so struck will at once wither and die. He said that, should I strip the hair from the spine of the dead brute, a ball made of it would strike down any other beast of the herd, even if thrown by my own hand.”

With a sigh, Bly said:

"Truly, we live in the age when the devil is to be loosed for a little season. Would to Heaven, St. John would again chain the dragon."

The sun had almost dipped behind the long line of blue hills. A listless repose, peculiar to New England autumns, seemed to have settled over the hills and valleys about the neighborhood of Salem. A drowsy, dreamy influence overhung land and sea and pervaded the very atmosphere. No wonder that the superstitious Puritans of that day and age believed the place bewitched. Certain it is, that it seemed under the same power, that held strange