scarcely in a more sorrowful
predicament. He grew nervous and fretful. Old dismal nursery stories
and all the witch lore of boyhood came back to his memory; and he crept
to his bed like a criminal to the gallows, half afraid to fall asleep
lest his mysterious companion should take a fancy to transform him into
a horse, get him shod at the smithy, and ride him to a witch-meeting.
And, as if to make the matter worse, his wife's affection seemed to
increase just in proportion as his troubles thickened upon him. She
aggravated him with all manner of caresses and endearments. This was
the drop too much. The poor husband recoiled from her as from a waking
nightmare. His thoughts turned to New England; he longed to see once
more the old homestead, with its tall well-sweep and butternut-trees by
the roadside; and he sighed amidst the rich bottom-lands of his new home
for his father's rocky pasture, with its crop of stinted mulleins. So
one cold November day, finding himself out of sight and hearing of his
wife, he summoned courage to attempt an escape, and, resolutely turning
his back on the West, plunged into the wilderness towards the sunrise.
After a long and hard journey he reached his birthplace, and was kindly
welcomed by his old friends. Keeping a close mouth with respect to his
unlucky adventure in Ohio, he soon after married one of his schoolmates,
and, by dint of persevering industry and economy, in a few years found
himself in possession of a comfortable home.

But his evil star still lingered above the horizon. One summer evening,
on returning from the hayfield, who should meet him but his witch wife
from Ohio! She came riding up the street on her old white horse, with a
pillion behind the saddle. Accosting him in a kindly tone, yet not
without something of gentle reproach for his unhandsome desertion of
her, she informed him that she had come all the way from Ohio to take
him back again.

It was in vain that he pleaded his later engagements; it was in vain
that his new wife raised her shrillest remonstrances, not unmingled with
expressions of vehement indignation at the revelation of her husband's
real position; the witch wife was inexorable; go he must, and that
speedily. Fully impressed with a belief in her supernatural power of
compelling obedience, and perhaps dreading more than witchcraft itself
the effects of the unlucky disclosure on the temper of his New England
helpmate, he made a virtue of th