Chapter 9

"Last night of all,
When yon same star, that's westward from the pole,
Had made its course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus, and myself
The bell then beating one--"
"Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!"

Hamlet.

It is our duty, as faithful historians of the events recorded in this
homely legend, to conceal no circumstance which may throw the necessary
degree of light on its incidents, nor any opinion that may serve for the
better instruction of the reader in the characters of its actors. In order
that this obligation may be discharged with sufficient clearness and
precision, it has now become necessary to make a short digression from the
immediate action of the tale.

Enough has been already shown, to prove that the Heathcotes lived at a
time, and in a country, where very quaint and peculiar religious dogmas
had the ascendancy. At a period when visible manifestations of the
goodness of Providence, not only in spiritual but in temporal gifts, were
confidently expected and openly proclaimed, it is not at all surprising
that more evil agencies should be thought to exercise their power in a
manner that is somewhat opposed to the experience of our own age. As we
have no wish, however, to make these pages the medium of a theological or
metaphysical controversy, we shall deal tenderly with certain important
events, that most of the writers, who were cotemporary with the facts,
assert took place in the Colonies of New-England, at and about the period
of which we are now writing. It is sufficiently known that the art of
witchcraft, and one even still more diabolical and direct in its origin,
were then believed to flourish, in that quarter of the world, to a degree
that was probably in a very just proportion to the neglect with which most
of the other arts of life were treated.

There is so much grave and respectable authority, to prove the existence
of these evil influences, that it requires a pen hardier than any we
wield, to attack them without a suitable motive. "Flashy people," says the
learned and pious Cotton Mather, Doctor of Divinity and Fellow of the
Royal Society, "may burlesque these things; but when hundreds of the most
sober people, in a country where they have as much mother wit, certainly,
as the rest of mankind, _know them to be true_, nothing but the absurd and
froward spirit of Sadducism can question them." Against this grave and
credited authority, we pretend to raise no question of scepticism. We
submit to the testimony of such a writer as conclusive, though as
credulity is sometimes found to be bounded by geographical limits, and to
possess something of a national character, it may be prudent to