the lane, weeping and wringing my hands, expecting
to find his dead body. I was very young then; but the scene has been
indelibly stamped on my memory.

"As I was running down the hill, I met him, so covered with dust and
blackened with gunpowder, that at first I knew him not. He knew me, and,
as I swooned at his feet, he carried me across a field to a road-side
inn, where I recovered, and we were about to resume our flight, when the
king's soldiers surrounded the house. One of the officers cocked his
pistol to shoot my father and would have done so, had I not clung to his
neck and presented my body as a shield between him and the trooper's
bullet.

"'Spare him for the hangman,' suggested another.

"He was spared, and at the trial it appeared that he held no commission
in the rebel's army, so he was condemned to ten years' penal servitude
in the colonies, and was sent to Virginia, whither I went, also. Of our
escape, through the kindness and courage of your relative in Virginia,
you already know."

"Is your father going to take you away?"

"Yes; he says that my persecution at Salem will cease as soon as he can
prepare a home for me."

"Where?"

"In Maine."

"Do you want to go away, Cora?"

She was silent for a long while, in fact, so long was she silent that he
asked the question again before she answered. Then, fixing her
beautiful eyes, with a startled expression, on him, she answered:

"No, no! I would not go away, if I could remain in peace; but our
persecutions seem endless. My father is a good man. Although he was a
player, he was ever the kindest of fathers, and taught me only the
purest religious sentiments, yet Mr. Parris calls him the agent of the
devil."

Charles shudderingly responded:

"Cora, I fear we are on the verge of a fearful upheaval of ignorance and
superstition. Religion, our greatest blessing, perverted, will become
our greatest curse. I cannot understand it, Cora; but we are on the
brink of some terrible volcano, which will destroy many, I fear."

That Charles Stevens was no false prophet, subsequent history has fully
proven. Coming events seemed to cast their dark shadows before. In New
England, there had been a preparation for this stage in the temper with
which the adventurers had arrived in the country, and the influences
which at once operated upon them. Their politics and religion were
gloomy and severe. Those who were not soured with the world were sad,
and, it should be