Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/225

 *dow, which she had not opened—to her surprise she found it unclasped, and a little way opened.

As this window, being situated very near the bed, was rarely opened, this fact confirmed her in the conviction that some one had been in the room. As she hastily shut and fastened it, she heard the side door open and close again—her husband had returned, then. Oh, welcome sound; she recognized his well-known step in the hall below; she heard the familiar creak of the door of the little entry closet where he was wont to deposit his hat and cane; and now his welcome step was on the stairs. Oh! what blessed sense of relief there was in that steadily approaching tread! But then there flashed over her mind the remembrance of that dim, shrouded figure she had seen in the entry way. What if her husband should encounter him, unarmed and in the darkness! and fears for herself all forgotten in tender, wifely anxiety for one so infinitely dear to her, she opened her chamber door and stood, light in hand, to receive him.

"Why, Hannah! why, wife!" said the