CHAPTER VI.

BEFORE plunging into the more

tragic, and perhaps the more interesting, portions of this history, I propose to sketch something of Rachel's wood-life at the cabin, in order (if for no other reason) to show how quietly happy were many of those little Salem cottages before they were struck by the witchcraft avalanche. By the middle of March, indeed, there were plenty of ghostly narratives flying between the villages; but the cabin was so far from both of them that it lay beyond the usual circuit of even the most eccentric and comet-like gossips; so that Rachel heard less to terrify her than might have been expected. The subject alarmed her at times, it is true; but, in general, she did not believe in witchcraft, because her father did not believe in it; and thus it was only after nightfall, or when she was accidentally alone, that any persistent superstitious terrors overbrooded her. Then. perhaps, she grew a shade paler, and look ed fearfully at the windows, as the stormy winds smote them, or the hooting owls filled the air without with their melancholy complaint. Like the voices of wizards, and lost spirits, and prowling fiends, seemed those wailings of fierce despair, those responses of agony, those comfortless moanings over some unutterable sin.

But for the most part, the forest befriended her with murmurs and whisperings of tenderest sympathy. Every morning was full of birds, and every noon freighted with treasures of sun

light. Her father had made her a couple of seats in the pine grove's shadiest thicknesses; and, after her simple housewifery was done, she took her sewing to these leafy hermitages and spent in them a great part of the day. At times the pine needles, awakened by the winds, sang to her in dirges and requiems; not woeful in the highest, such as organs thunder over the graves of perished mortality, but only sweetly mournful, as becomes funeral music for the leaves and flowers of by-gone summers. Robins, larks, blackbirds, and other feathered psalmists chanted and responded in hymns whose cheerful piety, as More said, the colonists would have done well to imitate. Partridges went by with a sudden whir, like gigantic shuttle-cocks, tossed by gamesome spirits. Woodpeckers hammered pertinaciously at the solemn trees, after the fashion of witches and troublesome demons bent on tormenting the elect. Crows cawed and cawed, with mocking laughter, from the chestnuts around the clearing, as if jesting with each other upon the infantine helplessness of the green corn sprouts. Then, later in the season, there came multitudes of crickets and katydids, sharply keeping up the venerable controversies which have divided, from time immemorial, those dogmatical races. An occasional cow lowed thankfully from the abundant grass in some near opening of the woodlands. The tramp of hobnailed shoes, or great boots," went by, up or down the forest pathway. the forest pathway. Rarely by day, but always at nine in the evening, the clamor of the shrill Salem bell reached

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the cabin, sweetened by the interval it traversed, as the stern character of the Puritans comes down to us, softened by its journey over centuries.

The sounds of the day were succeeded by others peculiar to the reign of moonlight and starlight. The frogs, in summer time, held turbulent evening congresses in the grassy brook before the cabin, appearing, sometimes, to her quick imagination, as if they were celebrating the mysteries of some amphibious witch communion. Five minutes before or after sundown, the whip-poorwills began their regretful reiterations, tempting her to many groping hunts after their nests, in which she always failed, although lighted by the fire-fles. An hour later arose the sharp, irregular bark of foxes, on the look-out for their fat friends, the partridges. On the deepening flow of eventide followed the moans and whoops of the whole race of owls, hooting out their remorseful and unforgiven wickedness; and at nine came the rising and falling wave of bell music, dying, as if with its last surge, among the pine tops, and warning her to her tranquil, delicious slumber.

It was natural, amid this solitude, that Rachel should feel a desire for pets, and in her gentleness try to domesticate, instead of harming, the wild creatures around her. The only savage individuals, however, with which she could form any tolerable intimacy, were the squirrels. The gray ones, indeed, conceitedly thought themselves too much of a prize, to trust their fat sides and long furs within reach of her fingers; but the red ones and the little chipmuks were soon seduced into a most gossipy familiarity. One loquacious fellow of the red sort cottoned to her, as the Southerners say, with particular quickness. Every morning she carried out, for his personal use, a nubbin of corn, or some other article of squirrel diet. At her appearance he galloped towards her through the grass, in a zigzag of rapid motions, as if he were some kind of a bushy-tailed, four-legged streak of lightning. Halting at her fect, he would take the nubbin from her hand, balance it over a root with one paw, nibble voraciously at its hard kernels, sit up suddenly on his hind legs to rest, put his head on one side to hear the talkative wind and leaves, and then recommence his brisk and amusing little

gluttony. For a tiresome while, any attempt to take him was followed by his immediate flight; but at last he would run up her dress, dive into her lap, and contentedly eat his breakfast under her apron. He learned to know

his name, Harry, and generally appeared with his capricious zigzags whenever she called him. Poor little fellow he came to a bad end at last, and very nearly involved Rachel in his own miserable condemnation.

More constituted by far the most important part of his daughter's human society. He was around the cabin a great part of every day, and always, except in extraordinary cases, during the evening, hoeing his corn and beans, cleaning his gun, casting bullets, arranging his fishing tackle and fabricating rude specimens of household furniture. Then again, he would be gone till noon, or perhaps night, returning in most cases with a load of birds or larger game. At evening he read to Rachel, taking whiffs of tobacco between the sentences, and commenting on the volume with a mixture of humor and gravity, which amused her endlessly. The work oftenest selected was the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, a personage who was reported to be one of our hunter's very remote relatives in some by-gone generation. He translated the Utopia into English, period by period, inasmuch as Rachel knew nothing of Latin; often pausing to dilate upon the hidden wisdom of that wonderful production, and its applicability to the civilization of the human race. Осса

sionally, too, he spent hours in reverie, weaving Utopias of his own for the government of the colony, which, if they had been put into successful practice, would have made the present Yankee population the most extraordinary people that ever astonished the world by its existence.

At other times More passed an entire evening over pen and paper, trying to pin down in rhyme and measure some poetic invention. In general, he tore up his patience and his paper before he completed his Parnassian design; but sometimes he was successful in stating his idea, and then he would read the verses to Rachel. His most fortunate effort, as he thought, was the following little hymn, inscribed to Sister Ann, in memory of her buried daugh

ter:

"When little children die,

They are not fearful;
They see the angels nigh,
So are they cheerful.

"Each smiles a wistful smile, Though he seems sleeping; Then in a little while

He has done weeping.

"Look in his pallid face;

There is no sadness;
But a sweet waiting grace,
Calmer than gladness.

"Still is the Holy One

Calling and blessing;
Still little children run
To his caressing."

Of the witchcraft troubles he seldom spoke; not that his mind did not run sufficiently on the subject, but, because he wished to keep Rachel's imagination free of those fascinating horrors. As for several sanctimonious gossips who used to come to the cabin with tales of possessed children, and dangerous old women," he so effectually routed them with harsh words that they left him to his own ways, and never tried thereafter to make his household miserable. In fact, his reputation as a Sadducee soon became notorious in the village, and caused a sensible diminution in the number of his respectable guests; so that, as summer drew on, Rachel was left more and more alone. Her uncle, however, still came to see her about twice a week, and her aunt nearly as often. Teague Rooney, also, was a frequent visitor at the cabin; for he regarded Master More with reverence, and the handsome girl with a truly Hibernian adoration. His delight at seeing her call the squirrel, and at beholding the lively little pet run over her dress and into her pockets, was something memorably infantine.

"But, Misthress Rachel," he observed, "sure, an if ye had a pig to take care of, ye'd be much happier. Daycon Bowson's pig there, be jabers! an what a swate crayther he is! I thought I should cry whin he got in the sthrate the other day, an Eldther Parris's dog bit his pratty hind leg. But he's a sthrange crayther, as I'll proceed to tell ye. Hannah,' says I, can't ye make a sup o' bread and milk poultice,' says I. An if ye can, I'll put it to his leg and cure him o' the bite.' Well, the poultice was made, an wid the help o' Hannah, I put it on, an tied it nately around wid a cloth. An what do ye

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think he did wid the poultice, Misthress Rachel? First he turned his nose short round an smelt of it; and thin he grunted twice, as much as to say, Arrah, an that's good for me; and thin the next thing he did was to ate it up intirely, be gorra! Oh, he's a curious crayther, the pig, an has his own ways, good cess to him! I wish that Daycon Bowson was meself, an he'd give ye the darlint afore he was a day older. He'd be a great loss to the family; but ye'd find him such gintale company out here alone. Ownly ye'd have to take bim into the cabin wid ye, or the bears wud be atin him up every blessed night, the noisy baste. He's a powerful animal at a squale; an they'd be sure to hear him, no matter if they was the t'other side o' the Bay."

One incident connected with Rachel's forest life is worth narrating, inasmuch as it afterwards came up in judgment against her. She was sitting on the ground, under the shadow of a dense hazel thicket, watching the pranks of Harry on a patch of open green sward, when she was startled by the report of a gun. Some grass flew into the air around the squirrel, who instantly darted toward her, as his nearest refuge. He reached the covert of her apron, and nestled under it, just in time to escape the jaws of a lean hound, who rushed forward as suddenly as if he had sprung out of the earth. With one hand Rachel put Harry into her bosom, while with the other she caught up a stick, and struck gallantly at the canine caitiff. He sprang away, and, opening his red, slavering mouth, gave forth a deep and dismal howl. In the same instant a man came upon her, gun in hand, but immediately leaped back, with an air of amazement and terror. It was William Stacey, a fellow whom she knew, by sight and reputation, as one of the loosest characters of the village. He stood aghast for a moment, with open mouth; pointed to a spot of blood on her neck, and then hurried away. She, too, was so much surprised, by the suddenness of the whole occurrence, that she never uttered a word, and probably looked sufficiently pale and startled. As soon as the dog had followed his master, she drew Harry from his warm asylum, and found that one buckshot had just grazed his panting sides, and drawn a few drops of blood. The little fellow was well in a few days, and, per