eir ministers, as well as
other disputes and lawsuits relative to the bounds of their respective
properties, there was no little amount of ill feeling among them. Small
causes in a village are just as effective as larger ones in a nation, in
producing discord and strife; and the Puritans as a people were
distinguished by all that determination to insist upon their rights, and
that scorn of compromising difficulties, which men of earnest and honest
but narrow natures have manifested in all ages of the world. Selfishness
and uncharitableness are never so dangerous as when they assume the
character of a conscientious devotion to the just and the true.

But all this time the young man has been walking almost due north from
the meeting house in Salem village.

The road was not what would be called a good one in these days, for it
was not much more than a bridle-path; the riding being generally at that
time on horseback. But it was not the rather broken and uneven condition
of the path which caused the frown on the young pedestrian's face, or
the irritability shown by the sharp slashes of the maple switch in his
hand upon the aspiring weeds along the roadside.

"If ever mortal man was so bothered," he muttered at last, coming to a
stop. "Of course she is the best match, the other is below me, and has a
spice of Satan in her; but then she makes the blood stir in a man. Ha!"

This exclamation came as he lifted his eyes from the ground, and gazed
up the road before him. There, about half a mile distant, was a young
woman riding toward him. Then she stopped her horse under a tree, and
evidently was trying to break off a switch, while her horse pranced
around in a most excited fashion. The horse at last starts in a rapid
gallop. The young man sees that in trying to get the switch, she has
allowed the bridle to get loose and over the horse's head, and can no
longer control the fiery animal. Down the road towards him she comes in
a sharp gallop, striving to stop the animal with her voice, evidently
not the least frightened, but holding on to the pommel of the saddle
with one hand while she makes desperate grasps at the hanging rein with
the other.

The young Puritan smiled, he took in the situation with a glance, and
felt no fear for her but rather amusement. He was on the top of a steep
hill, and he knew he could easily stop the horse as it came up; even if
she did not succeed in regaining her bridle, owing to the better chance