How dared you
bring him here without being handcuffed?"

"We had no idea of his breaking out anew, he seemed as meek as a lamb,"
said constable Herrick.

"Why, we thought he was a Quaker!" added his assistant.

"I am a Quaker!" said Antipas, looking a little dangerous again.

"You are not."

"Thou liest!" said the insane man. "This is one of my off days."

Joseph Putnam laughed outright; and a few others, who were not
church-members, laughed with him.

"Silence!" thundered Squire Hathorne. "Is this a time for idle levity?"
and he glared around the room.

"We have heard enough," continued the Squire, after a few words with his
colleague. "This is a dangerous man. Take him off again to prison; and
see that his chains are strong enough to keep him out of mischief."

CHAPTER XX.

Master Raymond Goes to Boston.

Whatever the immediate effect of Dulcibel's prediction had been,
Mistress Ann Putnam was now about again, as full of wicked plans, and as
dangerous as ever. She knew, for everybody knew, that Master Ellis
Raymond had gone to Boston. In a village like Salem at that time, such
fact could hardly be concealed.

"What had he gone for?

"To see a friend," Joseph Putnam had said.

"What friend?" queried Mistress Ann. That seemed important for her to
know.

She had accused Dulcibel in the first place as a means of hurting Joseph
Putnam. But now since the trial, she hated her for herself. It was not
so much on account of the prediction, as on account of Dulcibel's
terrific arraignment of her. The accusation that her husband was her
dupe and tool was, on account of its palpable truth, that which gave her
perhaps the greatest offence. The charge being once made, others might
see its truth also. Thus all the anger of her cunning, revengeful nature
was directed against Dulcibel.

And just at this time she heard from a friend in Boston, who sent her a
budget of news, that Master Raymond had taken dinner with Captain Alden.
"Ah," she thought, "I see it now." The name was a clue to her. Captain
Alden was an old friend of Captain Burton. He it was, so Dulcibel had
said, from whom she had the gift of the "yellow bird."

She knew Captain Alden by reputation. Like the other seamen of the time
he was superstitious in some directions, but not at all in others. He
would not for the world leave port on a Friday--or kill a mother Carey's
chicken--or whistle at sea; but as to seeing witches in pretty young
girls