As soon as the Massachusetts people heard of James's removal from the throne, they resolved they would not endure Andros any longer. One morning in April the Boston people rose as one man, beat their drums, and set up a flag on Beacon Hill. Then they took the governor and his men prisoners. Andros tried to escape by dressing up in woman's clothes, and had got past two of his guards, when the next one caught sight of his shoes, saw that they were not a lady's shoes, and so stopped his escape.

He was sent back to England, and although nothing was done to punish the colonies for his arrest, no steps were taken against him. Indeed, he was afterwards made governor of Virginia, but behaved better there, and gave the colonists no great alarm by his onslaughts on their liberties.

Governor Dongan of New York (one of King James's governors) was a mild ruler and not unjust to the people. But the Protestants there did not like him because he was a Catholic. When the news reached New York that William of Orange was king, there was an insurrection of the New York people, headed by Jacob Leisler. He took possession of the fort, and then sent word to England that he was holding the government against the Catholics for William and Mary. In the mean time, the king had sent Colonel Henry Sloughter to govern New York. When he arrived he arrested Leisler for treason.

Leisler had many enemies, and they put the worst color upon his acts, so that after a trial, he with his son in-law, Jacob Milbourne, were sentenced to die. They met death bravely, saying they had meant no treason, but had simply defended the rights of Protestantism and the new king and queen. This was the only blood shed in the colonies on the new change of government, and was the only cloud on the bright prospects of the new reign.

Are you wondering meanwhile what became of the Connecticut charter, which disappeared so suddenly from under the nose of Sir Edmund Andros? A certain Captain Wadsworth had seized it in the dark, and hidden it in a hollow place in an oak-tree just outside the court-house. There it stayed till William and Mary were proclaimed sovereigns of England, when it was taken out with great rejoicing. The old oak was always called the "Charter Oak" and remained green till 1856, when a storm blew it down.

And amid great rejoicing all over New England at the recovery of their liberties and the restoration of a Protestant monarch to the throne of England, the reign of William and Mary began.

CHAPTER XXVI.

SALEM WITCHCRAFT.

The Idea of the Devil.

Blief in Witches.

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Study of Necro

Causes for this Belief. mancy. Two Children " bewitched." — Arrest of Friendless Old Women. - Babies chained and thrown into Prison as Witches. Torture of Witches. Confessions. Hanging of Women. Witches' Hill. - End of the Witchcraft Madness.

SHORTLY after Sir Edmund Andros was deposed, and while the colony was under little or no government but that of the local authorities of Massachusetts, one of the worst events took place ever recorded in the annals of the American colonies. It is known as the Salem Witchcraft.

Of course you understand that there are no such things as witches; that there never have been and never can be. But in the days of which I write, a large number of people, whom we should think ought to have known better, believed in witchcraft. They believed that witches were a class of persons who had made a league with the devil to be his servants and children, and in return got power from him to do evil deeds and torment innocent people. In Europe, this belief was almost universal, and men and women had been not unfrequently burned, hanged, and tortured for witchcraft. King James I. of England, a stupid, narrow-minded old bigot, had believed in witches, and caused some to be hung in his day. Several times in the colonies there had been a brief excitement of this kind, and in many places some poor withered old woman, who lived by herself, was looked on with suspicion as a witch. But nothing in this country, and few things abroad, equaled the madness on the subject that prevailed in Salem in the year 1692.

We must take into consideration the fact that Salem was a peculiar colony. Its chief and founder was John Endicott, who was a stern, gloomy, fanatical man; naturally the colony fostered by him had something of his spirit impressed upon it, the spirit that had driven the good Roger Williams out into the wilderness. Salem, like most of the New England towns, was stanch in the idea that amusement or recreation must form a very small part in life. Religion-a hard, sombre kind of religion we should think it to-daywas the first thing in life; and work was the next thing. To dance, or play games, laugh gayly, sing much except psalm tunes in minor keys, were to them "ungodly customs." ungodly customs." The severe colonists of

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Massachusetts had once gone miles out of their way to cut down a May-pole wreathed with flowers, which, according to the custom in Merry Old England," some people had erected to dance around on the first day of May. To them such practices were "profane, and unbefitting God's people." All the light and color and brightness with which God has adorned the earth did not appeal to those hard Puritans. In short, these people were just, sternly honest, conscientious, ready to die for the sake of duty, but they completely turned their backs on one side of life. They did not recognize the fact that all work and no play not only makes Jack a dull boy, but that in the end it makes him worse than dull, it often makes him mad, and drives him even into terrible and unexpected crimes. Such a social system as theirs was sure to have some such an outbreak as it did in the serious town of Salem, and it was very well, to my thinking that it was not even worse and more wide-spread than it proved.

In the minds of these people the devil was a very important personage who had great powers and was very real. In their imaginations he had a long tail, a pair of horns, and hoofs like an animal. He could take all sorts of shapes, the most usual being that of a black man, or a black cat. Sometimes, however, he might be a pig, or even a spider, or flea. You have perhaps read similar stories of transformation in the "Arabian Nights." The queerest part of it was that learned men, not only in America but all over Europe, believed these old nurse's tales.

In such a state of belief as this a company of young girls, who had no wholesome girlish amusements to fill up their evenings, met together at the house of the village minister to study what was called "necromancy, or the black art of magic." The oldest of these was not more than twenty years, the youngest only nine. Two or three young married women afterwards became interested in their proceedings, and two slaves from the West Indies, who were Indians with a mixture of African blood in their savage veins, met also with them. No doubt these ignorant slaves, full of the wild superstitions of their savage estate, put many ideas in these children's heads. They had also a few old books on "magic" or the "black art " over which they pored in their secret conclaves. What they did at their meetings is not known. It is not impossible that they may have had exhibitions of some phenomena not unlike "modern spiritualism." But whatever they did, the worst sort of excitement

arose from it. All at once these girls began to have strange fits, to utter loud outcries, and be twisted in wonderful contortions, declaring that they were bewitched.

If they had been left unnoticed, or their meetings broken up, and they had been sharply reasoned with about their absurd conduct, it would probably have stopped at once. But the minister's daughter and niece, two girls eleven and nine years old, were among the number, and their conduct attracted his notice. Of course he be lieved in witchcraft, and was at once on the alert to hunt out witches. The girls accused a poor, feeble woman, with no worse crime than that of old age, as the cause of their convulsions, and she was at once taken up and thrown into prison. From that time the madness steadily increased till it reached its height. Soon another old woman, then another, was arrested. The victims were brought before their accusers, who straightway went into terrible convulsions at the first look of the witch's eyes, from which they were only recovered when the poor trembling old creature was loaded with chains and thrown into prison.

At first only old women, poor and friendless, were accused, but by and by young women, men, mothers with children, even little children of tender years, fell victims. At one time a woman and her five-year-old child both lay chained in Salem jail, awaiting trial for witchcraft. A little girl of eight was examined by a council of reverend men and frightened into saying that she was a witch, "her mother had taught her to be one." A widow with four children, the youngest an infant, was torn from her family, dragged from her house, her babies following and crying piteously for their mother. If the neighbors had not been tender-hearted enough to succor these children they might have starved, and it required some courage to succor the children of those accused of witchcraft.

When the "witches" were brought to trial, they were urged to confess their wicked practices. If they denied all guilt, they were confronted with their accusers, who were seized with convulsions at the sight of them, and who cried out upon them as having on such a night come to them to persuade them also to become followers of Satan. The prisoners were baited with questions, urged to confess, and sometimes in case of refusal were put to torture. Some were tied by the neck and heels, and hung up till the blood gushed from their nostrils; they were probed with pins, till a callous place insensible to pin-prick was found on them, when it was

said, "this was the devil's mark which he had set on his children." They did all sorts of cruel things that the inhumanity of the time could devise, till one old man, who had probably heard of the persecutions of Bloody Mary's time, said simply, "It seemeth me these are very like Popish cruelties;" and another colonist, speaking of the examinations of the witches, said, "They had trials of cruel mockings, which is the more strange, considering what a people for religion (I mean for profession of it) we have been." Sometimes the accused people, amazed at what they saw, badgered and baited by unfeeling judges, began to think they must be witches without knowing it. Their accusers urged them to confess that on such a night they had appeared in the shape of cats, or other animals, or in their own human form, and tempted such a girl or. woman to sign her name in a red book, "the devil's book." Hearing such strange accusations, urged with minute descriptions of their words and actions, while engaged in their unlawful practices, is it any wonder the victims almost lost reason, and sometimes confessed to crimes of which they had never dreamed? Of these, most took back their confessions, saying they had made them through fear, or from hope of mercy. But to their honor, be it said, most of the accused stood firm, and denied all these charges laid to them. They were largely intelligent and pious people, many of them disbelieving witchcraft altogether, and they showed a courage and steadfast heroism that would grace the annals of Christian martyrdom. One woman over eighty, hanged in Salem for witchcraft, died such a sublime death, so patient and heroic, praying tenderly for her misguided persecutors, that her story thrills the blood of him who reads it even to this day.

Day after day these girls grew bolder in their wicked madness, and Christian ministers who aided on the frenzy by their exciting sermons, preached more ardently that the town must be cleared of all witches. A saintly clergyman, named George Burroughs, once settled in Salem, was accused of witchcraft and murder. The ghosts of his victims appeared to one of these "possessed" children, and revealed that he had murdered his two wives and many other persons. On which the minister was sentenced to be hanged, which sentence was presently carried out. He died a holy death, with the Lord's Prayer on his lips. His body was taken down, disgracefully handled, and thrust half buried into the ground.

And now accusations of murder were made by wholesale. Ghosts