"Peradventure I may. It will be dull without thee, Chris; and with the rest of the boys making the master out a witch, they'll have no time for play."
"Well, take care of thyself, good fellow, and beware thou doest not provoke Dame Betty too far; she has a rare relish for calling people witches."
"Ay, that she has. There's a pail of water now at her door, and she's talking with our Debby, I doubt not: let's turn the bottom up to dry;" and in a wink the two boys were off for this bit of mischief.
In a few days all were off to Salem—Jonathan's father as one of the judges, the master to be tried for a witch, with those of the children whom he had afflicted as accusers, and jolly Chris to see the fun.
It was very lonesome for Jonathan at home, for he had no brothers or sisters, his mother was always sick, and Debby spent all her spare time talking with a crony across the way of the witch-woman, Bridget Bishop, then on trial for witchcraft.
So Jonathan made playmates of and amused himself with the chickens of the Rev. Deodat Parker, who lived next door. Now these chickens were the source of much pleasure to Jonathan, for the Winthrops had none, neither Jonathan nor Debby being deemed fit to be trusted with them; and Jonathan envied the Rev. Deodat Parker his yard full of staid old fowls and lively young chicks. Early in the spring Jonathan had loved to caress and cuddle up the little rolls of yellow and black down; but now that they were great stalking, ragged fowls, putting on all sorts of airs, they excited his ridicule, and he longed to tease them, and the last year's brood of clucking hens and crowing roosters, that didn't quite know what to make of these new-comers.
Once he would have gone over in the yard to play with and tease the chickens to his heart's content; but Dame Betty having traced the overturned pail and numerous other tricks to his door, he considered her an enemy in ambush, liable to fly out at any moment with a stout broom-stick or hot suds, and so wisely kept at a safe distance.
But roosted on the fence, with a handful of corn, Jonathan's fears were at rest, and he fed the chickens, drove the old roosters nearly wild with long and loud crowing, and sometimes made a hasty jump into the yard to set two ruffled, ambitious roosters fighting.
Now Jonathan teased and bothered the poor fowls so continually that they began to grow afraid of him, and would not come when he called them, much to his indignation. But one day he thought of a plan, and went straightway to work at it.
First he went to his mother's work-basket and got a spool of thread, then to the meal chest for a handful of corn. Sitting down on the door-step, he tied long strings of thread to each grain of corn, then climbed the fence, and commenced what was fun for him, but misery for the poor chickens.