"I have been to Boston, and but just came back yesterday. What strange things have been transpiring since I left?"

At this moment a door opened and Mr. Parris, a tall, pale man, entered from his study. The new-comer, without waiting for the pastor's wife to answer her question, rose and, grasping the hand of her spiritual adviser, cried:

"Mr. Parris, how pale you are! but then I cannot wonder at it, when I consider all I have heard."

"What have you heard, Sarah?" he asked.

"I have heard you are having trouble in your congregation."

"Who told you?"

"The rumor has gone all over the country, even reaching Boston. And they do say that the evil spirits have visited Salem to defame you."

Mr. Parris pressed his thin lips so firmly that the blood seemed to have utterly forsaken them, and his cold gray eye was kindled with a subdued fire, as he answered:

"I am far from insensible that at this extraordinary time of the devil coming down in great wrath upon us, there are too many tongues and hearts thereby set on fire of hell."

"To whom can you trace your troubles?"