Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/15

 Rh newly settled town of Salem, two persons, a woman and a little child, sat alone, and listened in awe to the fierce blasts of wind, which, rushing in from the angry sea, rocked their dwelling to its very foundations.

They were new-comers, and had been passengers in the latest vessel which came over in the preceding autumn. They were evidently Scottish by birth—the woman, who might have been about fifty-five years of age, was still an erect and handsome woman, though something of the sternness of purpose which marked the old Scotch Covenanters might possibly have been traced in her regular but strongly marked features. She held upon her lap a struggling child of six or seven years of age—a beautiful girl, in whose fair face, though now distorted by passionate weeping, might be read much of the beauty as well as the strong self-will which marked the face of the grandmother.

"Whist, Allie; whist, my bonnie bairn! weel ye?—dinna ye greet sae sair," said the woman tenderly, folding the sobbing child to her bosom. "Hush! hush! my ain pre-