"Bad news, awful bad. They say Fanny Burroughs is very low. My heart aches for that family. James was a good boy, and I wonder if anyone knows for certain that he is dead. I think possibly he may be among the Indians yet, although Shepherds' folks are sure he is dead, or he would come to Fanny. I suppose you have no particulars. Then there was George, his father, that they hung down at Salem. I wonder where they got evidence to convict him? To be sure, he and I did not exactly agree as to our religious views, but I never took that to heart, and would have done all I could to have saved him, even if he was not a regular ordained minister. I think from his record here that he was honest, don't you, Mr. Dimock?"
"Yes, Deacon Hobbs, I do. And James, his son, was an honest, upright and worthy citizen, and whoever was instrumental in causing those officers at Salem to come into our midst and take them away and murder them outright will surely repent when it is too late. I believe they have imprisoned Jim, and either have or will hang him, for the report of his being killed by the Indians, or wolves, may have come direct from Salem. Oh, Mr. Hobbs, it shatters my faith, that our Heavenly Father allows such men to live. This is terrible," he uttered, as he wiped the perspiration from his face and repeated, "terrible, terrible." Then as if aroused by wrong, he raised his voice as he faced the deacon, and continued: "Deacon Hobbs, I am no more safe than they were. If an officer should come in here now and arrest me for complicity with the devil, I should consider it my death knell, would you not?"
"Well, really," began the deacon, "I do not know. You see, I have been down to Salem and talked with Cotton Mather and others prominent in the church, and they seem to be worthy Christians. I have thought George Burroughs may have been convicted of some other crime. You see, the prison is closely guarded and all we get is hearsay."
SUSAN BEAVER
The reader will remember that Susan Beaver was talking when the deacon came in, and now stood listening to his subterfuge, and Dimock's stinging insinuations. As I remember Susan, she was short, stout, with black eyes, glistening teeth, and quick movements. She tried to keep silent, but now her cup of wrath was full, and reached the high-water mark, where danger could not restrain the break, and she broke:
"Deacon Hobbs, you miserable old liar, I saw the detectives in your house myself. Maybe they're waiting to take my husband to Salem. If so, you can inform them that they can never cross our threshold unless it is over my dead body. You say you do not know much about it. Was not Abigail at Salem, swearing against the minister? Did not you both swear he was in league with the Devil? Now you say he may have been convicted of some other crime. George Burroughs, that worthy Christian minister, defile his name, now he is dead, will you? Oh, you ought not to live another minute," and suiting the action to the word, she sprang across the store to the old cheese box. Now, I knew the cheese knife was long and heavy, and in the hands of a desperate woman. Bang-slam-bang, they went around and around the store, he holding a chair before him and crying, "Help! Murder!" while she struck out wildly without speaking a word. Dimock and Stubbs sprang in to save the deacon's life, but when I peeped through the crack and saw the broad grin on Dimock's face, I concluded their interference was not genuine. The deacon worked around the counter, when she sprang on top and had him in a trap, at which he dropped his chair and ran and plunged through the window headlong. After he had escaped, and Susan had time to think, she sat down and began to cry, but on being assured by Dimock that no one would think the less of her, she left the store.
While Paul was helping board up the broken window, I overheard Stubbs ask him: "Do you consider Cotton Mather and his associates murderers?"
"Oh, no," was the reply, "not exactly that. It is a phenomenal wave of insanity. Similar waves have spread their gloomy pall over the innocent, long before Joshua put the women and children to death at Jericho. These Salemites are at war with the Devil on the same principle that one nation wars with another; they justify themselves through a spasmodic lunacy, that duty calls them to kill their fellow beings.