Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/80

 group of trees, and passed his hand up the smooth trunks, one by one, as high as his hand could reach—one—two—three he has felt, and passed them by; at the fourth he halted—ah! he has found it—his hand had encountered the "blaze," or notch, cut in the bark of the tree; this was the place he sought.

Hastily scraping away the fallen leaves and dead branches of a former year from the roots of the tree, he drew from his pocket a small spaddle, or trowel, and commenced to dig an oblong cavity about the shape and size of an infant's grave. Evidently the ground had been dug before, for it offered little resistance to his efforts; but still the labor was sufficiently exhaustive, combined with the close, sultry breathlessness of the night, to bring large drops of perspiration from his dusky brow. But the heavy beads of moisture dropped unheeded to the ground; he never for them remitted his absorbing labor.

A slight rustle of the brushwood, and beneath the black shadow of the trees a stealthy step is furtively approaching; but