Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/189

 "Order them off of your premises at once and forever—or get your husband to do it—and forbid their coming again," said the magistrate, unhesitatingly. "Or, if you wish, I will do it for you."

"Oh! no, no!—not for the world. Alas! I dare not—it is a time of too much peril. The very air is heavy with danger, and sickening with horror. I feel that I am in the midst of spies and eavesdroppers," she said, glancing fearfully up at the closed windows, and dropping her voice to a still more cautious whisper. "One knows not where to look for treachery now. My power over my own servants is gone, and I am at their mercy. A chance-dropped word, innocent as it may be, may be caught up and twisted from its meaning, and carried to those who will know how to make a fearful use of it. It has come to this, brother, that I, a quiet, home-keeping matron—a believing, and, I hope, a consistent Christian—connected by birth and marriage with the best and most influential families in the land—I, the daughter of Judge George Corwin, and the wife of the Honorable William Browne, dare not, in my