Thomas Appleton returned to his school, and the children liked him better than ever, and brought him so many lame and footsore dogs to care for that he said he should have to take the largest building in town to house them all. The three "afflicted children" didn't go back to school, though no one knew whether that was because their parents thought they wouldn't be popular there after what had happened, or because they still considered that the schoolmaster might bewitch them.
Naturally enough it took Mistress Swan and Master Appleton some time to forgive their townsfolk for treating them so badly. But the people did their best to show them how sorry they felt that they had ever suspected them of evil dealings, and in time the two returned to their old attitude of friendliness toward all their neighbors. Neither of them was the kind to cherish a grudge.
Other people in Massachusetts, however, who were charged with being witches were not so fortunate as Ann Swan and Thomas Appleton. Some were found guilty and were executed for witchcraft. Then, when this strange and inhuman superstition had run its course, popular feeling changed quickly. Men and women became ashamed of what they had said and done. The fear of witches passed into history and became only a strange delusion of the past. But it had been a very real fear in Massachusetts in 1692.
VII THE ATTACK ON THE DELAWARE
(Pennsylvania, 1706)
I
Jack Felton, coming back to his home from the woods that lay north of the town of Philadelphia, on a day in May, 1706, stopped at his friend's, Gregory Diggs, the shoemaker, to ask for a bit of leather for a sling he was making. There was an amusing stranger there, a round, red-faced man, lolling back in his chair, one knee crossed over the other. Small, sharp-featured Gregory was driving pegs into the sole of a boot while he listened to the other's talk. The stranger nodded to Jack. "Howdy-do, my fine young Quaker lad," said he. "Do your boots need mending?"
"I want a piece of leather for my sling," said Jack.