Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/198

 Jonathan, younger than our little Mary here!—does it not seem pitiful? it is too unequal; if it were not so tragic, it would be an absurdity."

"But, Hannah, that child was a pestilent little wretch as ever breathed; if you had only heard her vile profanity and insolence."

"I do not question it in the least: poor, miserable little thing, she could be no less—a vagabond from her very birth; dragged round from place to place by her vagrant mother, what chance had she to learn any thing but evil? Poor little Dorcas! how often I have fed, and clothed her with my children's clothing; if I had not, I think her wretched little body must have perished long ago—I almost wish it had, it would have been better for her, perhaps."

"But, Hannah! you know the miserable child confessed."

"Confessed? yes, I dare say she said just what she had been told to say—she did not know right from wrong; but, Jonathan, if you had been a mother of many children, as I have been, and had sat and listened, as I