Titus drew a stool near the hearth. "Sit here, sir. It happens I was telling these boys about you, and about your talk of yester eve, about the witches," he added.
The stranger sat down, stood his tall hat on the floor, and spread out his fingers, fan-like, on his knees. "About the witches?" he repeated in his deep voice. "Hardly a pleasing subject. And yet one that concerns folks everywhere. Moreover, unless I'm mistaken, it concerns the people of Salem very particularly."
Mat and Joe could not help being impressed; there was something very mysterious in the man's voice and manner; he seemed to carry a strange, uncanny atmosphere about with him, and to give the impression that, if there were such creatures as witches, he would be precisely the person who would know most about them. As for the smith, it was very evident that he held his visitor in great awe.
"I told you of Goody Jones, of Charlestown," said the stranger. "I hadn't told you of the strange case of the woman Glover, who was laundress for John Goodwin of Boston. One day Martha, John Goodwin's oldest daughter, who was thirteen, told her parents that the laundress was stealing pieces of linen from the family washing. They spoke to her about it, and the woman dared to answer them with many strange threats and curses. Thereupon the little Martha fell down in a fit, and soon the same thing happened to the three other children, who were eleven, seven, and five years old. Afterward they all plainly showed that the laundress had bewitched them; they became deaf and dumb for stretches of time, they said they were being pricked with pins and cut with knives, they barked like dogs and purred like cats, they could even skim over the ground without touching it, or, in the words of the worthy Cotton Mather, seemed to 'fly like geese.' This lasted for several weeks."
"Saints above!" murmured the smith. "To think of that!"
"Yes," went on the stranger. "Doctors and ministers studied the case, and agreed that undoubtedly the Glover woman had bewitched the children, and she was hanged for trading in black magic."
"Aye," agreed Jacob Titus, "no doubt she was a witch. What those children did tallies with all stories of bewitchments."
Joe and Mat kept silent, but they could not help acknowledging to themselves that the children had acted very much as if the woman had bewitched them. Moreover, the stranger's manner made a great impression on his hearers; he never smiled as he spoke, was evidently very much in earnest, and looked tremendously wise.
His very next words served to increase this impression. "I have given much time and thought to this matter of witches," said he, "and it's that which has fetched me to your town of Salem. You know Salem Village, or Salem Farms, as some appear to call it?"
Of course they all knew Salem Village, a little group of farms that lay four or five miles out from their own town.