I let my eyes take in the room, with the oak beams overhead, blackened by smoke, the heavy tables and chairs, and the clean sanded floor. It was getting on toward night now, and the wind had died out. I was alone in the room, but I could hear Mistress Willis walking about in the apartment overhead, and giving some orders to the servant. I rose from my chair somewhat wearied, wishing that the inn keeper would return, so that I might meet him, and seek my bed. I walked to the window, noting that the moon had risen, and that the snow had ceased. As I looked through the casement I started, and doubted whether my eyes beheld aright, for I saw a sight of more than passing strangeness, and one that, for a time, struck terror to my heart.
The snow, which had been as white as a fleecy cloud, was now as red as blood beneath the silver moon!
At the same time I saw, coming toward the inn, at top speed, three men who ran on, never once halting to glance behind them.
CHAPTER II.
OF THE SCARLET SNOW.
There was a clatter on the stairs as Mistress Willis came down, her face white as the snow had been. She saw the red mantle from an upper window, and came to stand beside me, with fright in her eyes.
Together we watched the three figures, her breath coming like that of one who had run far, her heart thumping against her ribs. For myself, the first start over, I recalled that once before I had seen snow like that. Learned men said small Arctic plants in floating clouds, or tiny insects, had dyed the white flakes crimson. Yet in the town of Salem, that night, that a red shadow of doom portended, was the dread in every heart.
Nearer and nearer came the three men. Their boots cast up the snow, blood red on top and white beneath, so that their path was marked like a pale streak of dawn athwart a morning sky. They reached the inn door, and burst into the room scarce stopping to raise the latch. The shorter of the three, whom I took to be Master Willis, by reason of his good-natured face, from which even fear had not chased all the jollity, cried out:
“Oh, Lord, deliver us! ’Tis the snow of blood, and the witches of the air have sent it upon us. Of a truth they be demons of darkness; those who will be on trial to-morrow,” and he fell to murmuring a psalm tune in a high pitched, quavering voice, crowding the while into the chimney corner, where he could not see the red snow.
Now I was sore puzzled by all that had happened, although I set but small store by the crimson flakes. The talk of demons of darkness, and witches of the air, came with an odd sound to my ears. The more so as I had heard that these New Englanders were a plain, practical people, much given to prayers and pious works. To hear Master Willis prate of mysterious beings, then, made me wonder what had come to pass. The three men, and the wife of Willis, were huddled together now, one of them occasionally glancing with awestruck eyes out of the window.
“There is one comfort, though,” muttered the inn keeper, “the witches will be no more after to-morrow, as their trial is set for then, and there will be a short shrift, when once the honorable judges have passed sentence.”