Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/79

 very extremity of the village, ostentatiously speaking to several persons on his way, as if to enable him to prove an alibi if his future course should be traced, John suddenly turned aside, and, doubling on his track like a hunted hare, he made his escape by tortuous windings from the village, and proceeded at a rapid sort of dog-trot to the woods, where the unbroken forest stretched its primeval shade nearest to the infant settlement.

Hurrying along beneath the starless, leaden skies, with the unerring instinct of a brute nature, he made his way over hill and dale, over bushes, rocks, briars, and quaking morass, until, having entered the intricacies of the forest, he reached a lonely spot, where a spur of the low, wooded hills lay between him and the little settlement he had just quitted.

Here he paused for a moment, and took a rapid but keen survey of the place. Apparently he was right—his memory or his instinct had not been at fault; he measured the space with earnest gaze, then silently, in the dim light, he walked up to a small