III.

MONTHS passed away, and my mother enjoyed many pleasant seasons, and thought every day, if father was blessed, what satisfaction they would take in planning the little home they might be able to have. At first she desired that it should stand north of Phillips's Wharf, near the foot of Derby-street, if they could purchase there, where we had enjoyed so many delightful walks, and where, from the chambers, we could have a charming view of the harbor and its green shores and islands. But she changed her mind; and, after a visit to our friends in Wenham one day, when she brought home the gladness and beauty of summer in her heart, she wrote father a letter, in which she said :

"I have thought much of late of the dear little home we are going to have one of these days; and, unless you still insist on Derby-street, and your favorite view of the harbor, I think it must be in Wenham after all, where things look more beautiful than ever to me;—or over on Lafayette-street, beyond Derby's Farm. Or, if you must have the blue sea before you, why not build near Lynn Beach, where the grandest waves are rolling, and yet where one sees no ships depart, and hears no sighs of farewell grief?"

After the first year, it occurred to my mother that she could get along in a smaller and cheaper tenement than the one we occupied, and add the difference in rent to what she might earn with her needle, so as not to draw any from her allowance, and have all the more on father's return, to buy that little home. Her friends objected to the change, as they thought her tenement was small enough already, and they knew father would grieve to find she had worked so hard and practiced such self-denial in his absence. But she was determined, and she took a chamber in a large brown old house in Becket court. I remember how I wept when we left our home on the common for that unpleasant place.

Everything seemed to conspire to give us gloomy feelings. It was a rough, wild day in March, and we thought that the wind would blow us away while moving. In the evening a dreary and almost smothering darkness fell, and it rained in torrents all night. And the house was so gloomy for the first fortnight! I had heard very often of the witches that once infested Salem. I had heard of haunted houses and secret murders, and I felt, if ever a house had harbored witches or been haunted, or concealed a murder, it must have been the old brown house in Becket court. My mother told me it was built not more than a hundred years ago, and that the witches were all dead.

Then," said I, "this must be the haunted house you have told such stories of-the house where the bleeding man appears, crying for help, and screeching murder!"

"No, no," said my mother; "that house is over the river, and nothing will molest us here."

But the house was filled with such a ghostly gloom! It was large as a barn on the ground, and was three stories high. It had never been painted on the outside, and on the inside it looked as if no brush had touched it since the Revolution. The fire-places were large and deep, and the mantel-shelves were as high as mother's head, and long and narrow. The base, the chairmoulding, the cornice, and casings, were indigo blue, and the ceilings had been whitewashed so many times they were flaky as the crust of a Christmas pie. The windows were high and short, with little panes of blistered glass. We took a chamber and two bed-rooms on the second floor.

Our neighbors below had the reputation of very innocent people, but their wild and withered look increased my suspicions of the house, and made me dread our first night in the chamber. The head of the family must have been more than eighty years old. He had a long, thin nose, spotted a little with indigo, which I thought he must have taken upon it when the house was painted, and he made motions with his hands and feet just as I had heard the wizards did in ancient time. He kept whispering to himself, and laughing and frowning by turns, as if in conversation with some invisible being, and went around the street picking up pins, nails, and buttons, as they said it was the custom of real wizards to do.

This old man's wife looked even older than himself, She answered the description of a

and more suspicious.

witch. She had a low, wrinkled forehead; her eyes were small and staring as a parrot's, and closely set. There was a long hair mole of wolf's gray on her cheek; her mouth was hollow, her nose and chin almost met, and she looked as if she could ride a broom-stick when the weather was mild and there was no wind to blow her away. She saluted us with a little croupy voice, and she was sweeping cob-webs. I could not doubt but she was as good a witch as old Ma'm Nurse or Mary Easty, while my mother thought they were a harmless old couple as there was in Salem.

A son and his orphan children lived with them. The son was a maniac. It was told us that he had been a sensible little man, but he was one of the jurors who doomed that poor impulsive boy, Merrill Clark, to the gallows, for arson, which others induced him to commit: that he witnessed his execution, and saw his bright yellow hair float on the wind as he struggled with the pangs of death, and he was smitten with such horror for the heart-rending scene, and for his own action in the tragedy, he went home a maniac, and had continued a maniac to that day. This melancholy object was often before our eyes, smiling and weeping by turns; crying now, "Poor Merrill it was my voice that killed thee !" then, starting up with a look of frantic joy, and saying, "Thank God! we saved Merrill-he was such a pretty, tender boy-we saved him from the gallows, and he is not dead !”

This man increased my terrors, though I was told that friend Buxton was going to take him away and make an effort to restore his mind. The children had wild

and glassy eyes, their hair was a smoky white, and they kept hitching up their shoulders. There was a smell of cats and pigs, and snuff and fish in the house, and I was startled by the echoes that gabbled and squeaked around the dreary chambers.

However, there were several things to cheer us. On the first night, in particular, though dreary enough, we found it more cheerful than we expected. The black darkness without wrapped fold after fold around the city; the wind blew a terrible blast; the thunder echoed with a sort of wizard laughter in the sky, and the lightning startled us often from our seats. But we had our large chamber lighted with a rousing fire, and spent the night with some enjoyment. Milly Dorlon staid with me, and we read the New England Primer, and told stories and riddles till bed-time, and were glad to have the dreams which we desired, as we expected they would come to pass.

Number Four, Becket court was not nearly as pleasant as the house we left; but we had a good roof and plenty of room, and what if there were no charming mall, with its proud old elms in view of our window, to put damask curtains out of mind, and refresh our weary eyes? Mother had a smaller rent to pay, and with plenty of work and perfect health, she maintained her little family in comfort, and sent Jesse and me to school, both summer and winter.

We remained some time in Becket court, and that time wrought changes in the forms and characters of the children. I grew to a goodly stature, if that were all, and enjoyed such health and spirits, I was willing enough