find time to mix sociably with their fellows, and to grace the fashionable promenades with their manly presence. Their magnanimity, however, will be better appreciated, if, instead of indulging in generalities, I set before you the details of any one board taken at random. Let us select that for the Supervision of Relief to the Poor. Here we find a President at £1,200 a yeur, a Secretary at £800, five clerks at sa saies varying from £117 to £235 eɛ Yi, a messenger at £40, three sheriffs at and five unpaid members. Now, 'n i mark the noble return made by sixteen individuals for this mean jnd scanty remuneration. I copy frora the Edinburgh Daily Express:

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"(1.) Investigated charges against 18 inspectors, dismissed 1, accepted the resignation of 4, censured 7, cales. ned 2, and found 4 not guilty. (2.) Passed a minuto making inspectors responsible for the proper relief of the poor within their parishes. (3.) Issued a circular, explaining the duties of inspectors in regard to elections of local boards. (4.) Sanctioned change in the mode of assessment in 29 parishes, and refused to sanction change in 4. (5.) Increased the number of elected members of board in parish of Elgin. (6.) Approved the erection of poorhouses in 6 parishes, and combinations of parishes. Approved plans and sites for poorhouses in 2 parishes, and alterations or additions in 5. (7.) Prohibited the use of double beds for adult paupers (!) in Aberdeen poorhouse. (8.) Inquired into the state of the Kirkaldy poorhouse, and intimated that, until altered, an offer of admission could not be recognized as a legal offer of relief. (9.) Sanctioned or refused to sanction rates for boarding paupers in certain parishes. (10.) Arranged for the eighth distribution of the grant of £10,000 in aid of medical relief. (11.) Decided whether it was necessary that certain fatuous paupers (290 in all) should be sent to asylums or not. (12.) Called attention of inspectors to the necessity of attending to certain legal forms in the case of fatuous paupers. (13.) Decided 549 complaints of inadequate relief; of these 300 were dismissed on the information contained in the mere schedule of application."

All this for a beggarly £4,000 a year. The case of the Fishery Board is even yet more striking. For the small year

ly sum of £500, its members actually. take the trouble to dispense £12,000 annually. Yet one more note of admiration, and I have done. In the olden times the wisdom of our ancestorswise, according to their lights-was content to regard the agricultural counties as efficiently, or rather sufficiently, represented by the peers whose estates were almost coequal and synonymous with those counties. The proportion of county to burgh members was consequently very small, and thus the influence of the great lords was in some measure restricted to their own House. In these liberal times we have, of course, changed all that, and in our well-directed attempts to give all parties fair play, have very considerately opened the Lower House, also, to the aristocracy. In a commercial and industrial country, it is clear that the best judges of what is beneficial to trade and manufactures must be that impartial class which looks down serenely, from its pride of place, upon the toils and turmoils of the hewers of wood and drawers of water. It would be strange if this truth were not thoroughly understood by the intelligent, sensible, independent electors of Scotland. Accordingly, out of fifty-three constituencies, twenty-four did themselves infinite honor by returning representatives who bear titles or social distinctions. Scotch paper, the Herald, thus classifies the chosen delegates of the people:

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"There is one peer, the Earl of Fife, who, by virtue of being purely an Irish peer, can, like Lord Palmerston, do that which no British or, perhaps, no Scotch peer can, viz., sit as a commoner. In every other respect Scotch peers are entitled to the privileges of British or United Kingdom peers as regards precedence, freedom from personal arrest in civil action, etc. An Irish as contrasted with a Scotch peer (out of the sixteen representative peers), has still the extra right, if so inclined, to sit in the House of Commons. Then we have the two eldest sons (Earl of Dalkeith and Marquis of Stafford), and hence heirs-apparent to the great ducal houses of Buccleuch and Sutherland; there are four prospective earls, viz., Lord Haddo, Lord Melgund, Lord Duncan, and Lord Elcho. In addition, to make up this glittering bead-roll of twenty-four, we have the younger sons of marquises, earls, viscounts, and

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CHAPTER XXVI.

HE time was when Mark read the Bible to his mother; but now it was she who read it to him. Sitting by the great lonely fireside, from which Rachel had been taken, glancing stealthily now and then at his face to see if any ray of comfort was there, she read with a little tremble in her voice: "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence because he hath borne

it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust if so there may be hope. But the Lord will not cast off forever; for though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies."

Let us leave them there; she still holding the great brown book on her unsteady knees; he still leaning forward, motionless, his face hidden by his sun-browned hands. If we go to the Salem jail, we shall find Rachel with another Bible, also open, though its pages seem very hazy and distant to her, as if seen through infinite mists of tears. But let us not enter, for Elder Higginson is going in, and he has better business there than the gratification of curiosity. We may peep into the study of Elder Noyse now, without any danger of encountering open Bibles. He seems to be rather fonder of opening a new stone flask which stands on the mantel-piece; and, indeed, one would take it to be a friend that he has been in the habit of trusting for some time back, so frequently does he recur to it for counsel and consolation. Yet even that spiritual helper does not seem to bring him perfect steadiness of

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nerve's or calmness of soul. Sometimes he loks suddenly over his shoulder, as if ere were some one calling him from behind; sonrotimes he opens his study door and glares out with dreadful expectation, as if he had heard horrible whisperings in the passage. Is he haunted by spectres, or tempted of fiends, or are these the first symptoms of delirium-tremens? There are moments, too, when he has the air of being ready to make some great confession; and then again he seems to force himself back into a steady and fierce resolution of guilt. What makes him stare at his razor with such longing and yet coward eyes? Surely the simple idea of shaving himself cannot induce him to scowl and shudder after that fashion.

And now Frisk had an affair of the most serious nature with the energetic executors of Salem justice. I think, Square Curwin," said Sheriff Herrick :

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or ruther, I want to know what you think about that ere dawg-Bowson's dawg. Whether old Bowson was crackbrained, or boosy, or bewitched, or what not, you say you can't say, and I

say I can't say. But the dawg-I

reckon that dawg is a familiar; and I think he oughter be committed and brought to trial. What do you think, Square ?"

"Well, Sheriff," replied Curwin, gravely rubbing his chin, "I am prone to believe that the dog, as you say, is a familiar. At any hazard he ought, as a measure of precaution, to be made away with. He has some very demoniac ways with him, eh ?"

Yells like murder at a hymn, or a meetin'-ous bell," observed Herrick. "Just so," said Curwin. I myself

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kicked him out of lecture, two Thursdays agone, for making a scandalous disturbance. But as to a trial, I think the court would hardly receive such a finding; moreover, it would be somewhat ludicrous, and would give a hold to the mocking Sadducees. I learned in Andover that the dog which was afflicted by Master John Bradstreet, was hung up without any formalities. I say, therefore, take this brute wherever you find him, and finish him at once." "And the law will purtect me in it, Square?" inquired Herrick.

"Unquestionably," replied the justice. 66 What is a dog's life compared with the safety of everlasting spirits? Does not the Scripture say,Without are dogs?' showing thereby that dogs were little esteemed by the apostles."

Toward the deacon's house went the sheriff, inquiring of every one: "Haven't seen anything of a white dawg, have ye? A prick-eared dawg with a squirrel-tail-old Bowson's old Bowson's dawg."

Very naturally he found the dawg at home, sitting in the sun on the doorsteps, and occasionally scratching at the threshold by way of requesting an entrance. Herrick whistled to him coaxingly, but Frisk wagged his tail and remained at his post, as much as to say: I am monstrously obliged for your politeness, but I don't like your company. Herrick entered the yard and approached the animal, whistling and patting his knee with a smile of inconceivable fascination. Frisk, however, was sulky, and backed off as the other advanced, crouching in a deprecatory style, but still keeping at a distance. "Come here, sir, come here!" called the sheriff, angrily. Scared and refractory, Frisk now took to his heels down the garden.

"Drat the critter,"

said Herrick. "I shall have to run him down, which won't be so thunderin' easy."

This was the nearest approach that he ever made to swearing; for, coldblooded brute as he was, his life was regular, and he even went scrupulously to church, although not a professor. He rushed after Frisk, and found himthe incautious quadruped!-sitting in the door of the barn. Chasing him in, Herrick closed the only outlet, and muttered: "Now I've got ye." So he had, but not until he had trotted up and down stairs twenty times, scrambled

all over the haymows, bumped his head against the rafters, narrowly escaped impalement on a pitch-fork, and saved his brains, by a tight squeeze, from the spiteful heels of old sorrel. He clutched the fugitive by the scruff of his neck, at last, and rammed him, yelping, into an empty corn-bag which lay fortunately convenient. "Now then," he soliloquized, as he cooled off, "where shall I hang this critter? It oughter be on Gallus Hill; that's the form; that's jurisprudence. He's property, too; and I han't no legal warrant to destroy it; might be prosecuted for it, I s'pose, according to law. I'll hang him on Gallus Hill, any way. That can't be nary great violation of the charter."

He took a back way across the gardens, and reached his house without being observed by the Bowsons and Stantons. Saddling his brown nag, he mounted and set off for the gibbet; Frisk swinging, with stifled lamentations, over his shoulder, while a troop of boys trotted on after him, wondering what show was now to be exhibited to their indefatigable curiosity. Arrived at the gallows, he tied his horse to one of the uprights, flung a light noose over the fatal crossbeam, and then proceeded to open the sack with every suitable caution. Frisk allowed himself to be dragged out quietly, and made no sort of disturbance till he caught sight of the gallows; but at that spectacle he yelped and struggled furiously, as it the whole measure of his condemnation had been suddenly revealed to him. He had attended every execution in the company of his master; he had watched the convulsions of the victims in their last terrible agony; and he was no such fool of a dog as not to understand that all that kind of thing was extremely unpleasant. I have no doubt that he so comprehended matters; for now only did he make a frantic and bloodthirsty resistance. In fact, he did what he had never done before in all his good-natured life; he bit like a wolf, and brought a stream of gore from Herrick's horny fingers. The sheriff let go his hold with a roar; and, ere he could pick up a stone, Frisk was forty yards off. Then "There was racing and chasing on Gallows Hill plain;

But the lost Frisk of Salem they bagged not again."

Where he went, or how he subsisted during the winter, is a mystery; but

not until the next spring was it that he sneakingly reappeared in his native village.

The dreary new year of 1693 followed now; and two days after it came a court at which fifty unfortunates were tried for witchcraft. Let us hasten, with swift feet and half-averted eyes, over these monotonous tragi-comedies; only observing that the general aspect of things was better at this time than it had been. The Colonial Assembly had appointed a regular Court of Oyer and Terminer, in place of the informal one, called in the first emergency, which had acted with such savage zeal. Public opinion had receded and was still receding from its high tide of affrighted credulity. People talked low against the convictions which had taken place, and loudly against the prospect of any future ones. On the other hand, Stoughton, Parris, Mather and others of Juggernaut's enthusiastic supporters, stung by the reproaches which began to volley at them, resolute to crush the reaction before it came to a head, did their best in procuring evidence, and in electioneering against the Sadducees.

Rachel had the misfortune to be tried first, before the influence of these fervent gentlemen was quite broken. As she stood up in front of the judges and tried to murmur, "Not guilty," the

church was filled with a moanful whisper of pity; but this voice of mercy found no echo in the court, and the sheriffs hushed it down sternly. The poor girl could not defend herself; yet the bench would not allow Mark nor any one else to plead for her. As usual, too, every species of evidence, that could in any way tend to a conviction, was marshaled in one huge battery of accusation.

Sarah Carrier was brought into court, and bullied out of some declarations concerning the magical nature of the More family, and the great peril of marrying into it.

She was very unwilling to say anything against Rachel ; cried bitterly, and complained that Elder Noyse had threatened to hang her.

In a very different spirit, and with a glib, flippant impudence, Elizabeth Parris swore that the prisoner had often afflicted her, both before and since her arrest. 66 Dear child, it is not so," exclaimed Rachel eagerly; and then she added, with a look of tearful re

proof: "There is another judgment, dear child."

These were the first words that she had spoken aloud; and they startled the audience for a moment into a wonderful stillness. Noyse broke it by muttering to Parris: "Another judgment? another judgment? Why, brother, she must hope in the judgment of Minos, or Mahomet. She can't surely desire the judgment that we preach of."

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Oh," replied the elder of Salem village, "she looks to her father's coming; he is prince of darkness, you know."

Noyse shook with laughter, like a man whose nerves are perfectly ungovernable, and walked unsteadily to the other side of the house to confer with Newton. During the whole trial he moved about incessantly, whispering to ministers, magistrates, and judges. "I cannot see, elder," said Hawthorne to him, "why you are so exercised for the condemnation of this child. a meek, harmless little thing."

She is

"He! he!" giggled Noyse, throwing a stifling breath of rum into the magistrate's face. "Why, justice, we all exercise for it, do we not? Surely the witnesses exercise. See Santy there in her convulsions. He he he! haw! haw!"

Santy, as might be expected, came down with her evidence by the hourful, and spiced it with plenty of energetic hysterics. It was, however, the commonest and dreariest kind of such rant as was usually poured out in the witchcraft trials. "Rachel had tempted her to drink magic liquors; had haunted her, in company with a black man of small stature; had bitten her, and tried to get down her throat in the shape of a red squirrel; had flown away, in her sight, over tree-tops and into chamberwindows." During her almost unintelligible babble, many of the spectators absolutely yawned with weariness; as much as to say that they had heard all

that kind of thing a great many times before.

Her illustrious successor was William Stacey (brother of John Stacey, the tavernkeeper), that same shooting vagabond who, seven or eight months previous, had come so near doing the business of Rachel's pet, Harry. What he had to tell was that very circumstance, together with such fantastic additions as his boosy imagination suggested. "My dog Teazer," said this sporting gentleman, "he come on a red squirl, nigh Harry More's cabin, under the pines, which he was like to nab; but it run away towards a tree, whereby I shot at it, and scoured on arter the dog. The squirl took another trail, and made for a bunch of elders, which, coming up to at a full run, I saw nothing but Rachel More, sittin' on the ground aneath the elders, lookin' mighty skeery like, with blood on her face and buzzum, which same put me in a dreadful skeer, as well as Teazer, who smelled of her and whined; whereby I never said a word, but jest stood and pinted at her, seein' as how she was a witch, and could change herself into a squirl and change back. She was white and a pantin', but up with a switch and flew at Teazer, who scoured off with his tail down, and I likewise, which I say without shame, having seen naught of the like afore or sence, as I hope to be saved.”

Such was the long and short of William Stacey's testimony, which flushed Noyse's face with suppressed merriment, yet which, so far as corporeal circumstances were concerned, was as accurate an account of the bare circumstance as one could reasonably demand of a drunkard. For the present it gave very general satisfaction to the judges, excepting Judge Sewall, who ill-naturedly took occasion to aggrieve the conscientious witness by various skeptical cross-questions. A couple of old grannies, and as many little girls, swore that they were acquaint of this squirrel; that they had often seen him about More's cabin, and even almost in the cabin; that he answered Rachel's call, jumped into her lap, and ran up and down her dress; that, to the best of their horrified belief, he was her familiar or attendant devil.

"Good-wife Daunton," said the attorney to a smooth, dumpy woman, who took her place on the stand, " you are the helpmeet of the jailer, I believe."

"I reckon I be, sir, to be sure," replied Good-wife Daunton, smiling in a way that put one in mind of a plate of soft butter.

"Tell the court," said Newton, "what have been the communications of the prisoner, with regard to religion, since her confinement."

"I never knew as she have been confined," replied Good-wife Daunton. “She haven't been married a month, please the honubble court, sir."

"I mean to say since her imprisonment," explained the lawyer.

"Oh, sence her imprisonment! Oh, sence then her communications have been beootiful to be sure. She have read the Scripter amazingly, and hearn to prayer and sich like, as if she was a dyin' angel."

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Oh, ah, yes," broke in Newton, apparently not much gratified by the response. "But you have examined her, I hope. Tell the court what witchmarks you have found upon her."

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"Please the honubble court, I have examined her," testified Good-wife Daunton. “I have examined her keerfully, and found no witch-mark whatsoever." "What a plague's come over the woman," muttered Newton. "I thought she always found witch-marks."

He dismissed the good-wife with a look of great contempt, and recalled William Stacey. That personage stated that, since the death of More, he had shot habitually in the woods around the deserted cabin, and had devoted his attention particularly to squirls, in the hope of massacring that one which had once so incomprehensibly frustrated him. He had killed above a score and a half of them in that vicinity, and thought that he had finished the career of the bushytail in question about the first of October.

This was sufficient: this explained the absence of witch-marks from Rachel: three months would heal a sore spot, though it were made by no matter what unclean spirit. That miserable Elder Noyse seemed to be more amused than ever at this portion of the testimony. His excitement had evidently quickened his sensibility to the comic; and, perhaps, he appreciated all the risible horror and nauseous grotesque of these tales about demoniac suckings. One really feels like despairing of the devil, at hearing of his playing such tricks on wrinkled old hags, of ninety