Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/215

 "Oh, Alice, my child! wa' it safe to offend them? Who kens what harm they may do ye?"

"I know it, grandmother; but I could not bear to look at them or speak to them, or have them touch me; I felt as if they were murderers—that there was blood, innocent blood, on their cruel hands.

"'Why do you walk?' says she; 'if you are in such a hurry, why don't you ride?'

"'You might have been riding in your own coach,' says the woman, 'if your old grandmother had not stood in your way.' And then they both laughed.

"'You know nothing of me or my grandmother,' said I. 'Let me go, will you?' and I pulled away my sleeve.

"'Don't I? indeed!' says the woman; 'maybe I know more of her than you do. And when did you hear last from your father, my dear?'

"'You have mistaken me for some one else,' says I, 'for I have no father.' And I broke from them.

"'No; none to speak of, you mean,' says the woman, laughing; but I would not hear