Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/218



CHAPTER XIII.

THE MIDNIGHT TERROR.

"In the cold, moist earth they laid her, when the forest cast the leaf, And they wept that one so beautiful should have a life so brief."

Nearly a week subsequent to the conversation between Justice Corwin and his sister, which has been given in a previous chapter, Colonel William Browne, who had found himself strangely vexed and hampered in every way in his business, owing to the excitement of the times, and the intense, all-absorbing interest taken by all classes of the community in the pending witch-trials, informed his wife at "supper-time," as it was then commonly designated, that he should probably be out late, as it was his intention to pass the evening at his father's house, where they were to be busy in adjusting certain