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                             DELUSION;

                    OR THE WITCH OF NEW ENGLAND.

                      By Eliza Buckminster Lee


     "There is in man a HIGHER than love of happiness: he can do without
     happiness, and, instead thereof, find blessedness."--SARTOR.


    BOSTON:
    HILLIARD, GRAY, AND COMPANY.
    1840.

    Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1839,
    BY HILLIARD, GRAY & CO.
    in the clerk's office of the district court of Massachusetts.





PREFACE.


The scenes and characters of this little tale are wholly fictitious. It
will be found that the tragic interest that belongs to the history of
the year 1692 has been very much softened in the following pages.

The object of the author has not been to write a tale of witchcraft, but
to show how circumstances may unfold the inward strength of a timid
woman, so that she may at last be willing to die rather than yield to
the delusion that would have preserved her life.

If it is objected that the young and lovely are seldom accused of any
witchcraft except that of bewitching hearts, we answer, that of those
who were _actually_ accused, many were young; and those who maintained a
firm integrity against the overwhelming power of the delusion of the
period must have possessed an intellectual beauty which it would be vain
to endeavor to portray.

This imperfect effort is submitted with much diffidence, to the
indulgence of the courteous reader.




THE WITCH OF NEW ENGLAND.




CHAPTER I.

    "Ay, call it holy ground,
    The soil where first they trod:
    They have left unstained what there they found,--
    Freedom to worship God."


New England scenery is said to be deficient in romantic and poetic
associations. It is said that we have no ruins of ancient castles,
frowning over our precipices; no time-worn abbeys and monasteries,
mouldering away in neglected repose, in our valleys.

It is true that the grand and beautiful places in our natural scenery
are not marred by the monuments of an age of violence and wrong; and our
silent valleys retain no remnant of the abodes of self-indulgent and
superstitious devotion; but the descendant of the Pilgrims finds, in
many of the fairest scenes of New England, some memento to carry back
the imagination to those heroic and self-sacrificing ancestors. His soul
is warmed and elevated when he remembers that devoted company, who were
sustained amid hardship and every privation, on the trackless ocean, and
in the mysterious and appalling solitudes of the forest, by a firm
devotion to duty, and an all-pervading sense of the immediate presence
of God.

The faults of our ancestors were the faults of their age. It is not now
understood--and how wide from it was the conviction then!--that _even_
toleration implies intoleration. Who is to judge what opinions are to be
tolerated? He whom circumstance has invested at the moment with power?

The scene I wish to describe was on the borders of one of the interior
villages of New England,--a mountain village, embosomed in high hills,
from which the winter torrents, as they met in the plain, united to form
one of those clear, sparkling rivers, in whose beautiful mirror the
surrounding hills were reflected. The stream, "winding at its own sweet
will," enclosed a smooth meadow. At the extremity of the meadow, and
shadowed by the mountain, nestled one of the poorest farm-houses, or
cottages, of the time.

It was black and old, apparently containing but two rooms and a garret.
Attached to it were the common out-houses of the poorest farms: a shed
for a cow, a covering for a cart, and a small barn were all. But the
situation of this humble and lonely dwelling was one of surpassing
beauty. The soft meadow in front was dotted with weeping elms and
birches; the opposite and neighboring hills were covered to their
summits with the richest wood, while openings here and there admitted
glimpses of the distant country.

A traveller coming upon this solitary spot, and seeing the blue smoke
curling against the mountain side, would have rejoiced. There is
something in the lonely farmhouse, surrounded with its little garden,
and its homely implements of labor, that instantly touches our sympathy.
There, we say, human hearts have experienced all the changes of life;
they have loved and rejoiced, perhaps suffered and died.

The interior consisted of only two rooms. In the ample chimney of that
which served for the common room, was burning a bright flame of pine
knots; for, although it was the middle of summer, the sun sank so early
behind the hills, and the evenings were so chilly, that the warmth was
necessary, and the light from the small window cheered the laborer
returning late from his work.

An old man sat by the chimney, evidently resting from the labors of the
day. He was bent by time, but his brilliant eye and his flowing gray
locks gave a certain refinement to his appearance, beyond that which his
homely garments would warrant.

A woman, apparently as aged as himself, sat by the little window,
catching the last rays of evening, as they were reflected from her white
cap and silvery hair. Before her was a table on which lay a large Bible.
She had just placed her spectacles between the leaves, as she closed it
and resumed her knitting.

These two formed a picture full of the quiet repose of old age. But
there was another in the room,--a youth, apparently less than twenty,
kneeling before the flaming pine, over the leaves of a worn volume that
absorbed him wholly.

The ruddy flame imparted the glow of health to a countenance habitually
pale. Over his dark, enthusiastic eye was spread a clear and noble brow,
so smooth and polished that it seemed as if at seventy it would be as
unwrinkled as at seventeen. His piercing eye had that depth of
expression that indicates dark passions or religious melancholy. He was
slender in form, and very tall; but a bend in the shoulders, produced by
agricultural labor, or by weakness in the chest, impaired somewhat the
symmetry of his form.

They had been silent some moments. The young man closed his worn volume,
an imperfect copy of Virgil, and walked several times, with hurried
steps, across the little room.

At length he stopped before the woman, and said, "Mother, let me see how
much your frugal care has hoarded. Let me know all our wealth. Unless I
can procure another book, I cannot be prepared for the approaching
examination. If I cannot enter college the next term, I never can. I
must give up all hope of ever being any thing but the drudge I am now,
and of living and dying in this narrow nook of earth."

"No, no, my son," answered the woman; "if my prayers are heard, you will
be a light and a blessing to the church, though I may not live to see
it."

The young man sighed deeply, and, taking the key she gave him, he opened
an old-fashioned chest, and, from a little cup of silver tied over with
a piece of leather, he poured the contents into his hand. There were
several crowns and shillings, and two or three pieces of gold.

Apparently the examination was unsatisfactory, for he threw himself into
a chair, and covered his face with his hands.

The old woman rose after looking at him a few moments in silence, and
laid her hand gently on his shoulder.

"My son," she said, "where is the faith that sustained your ancestors
when they left all their luxuries and splendor, their noble homes for
conscience' sake. Yes, my son, your fathers were among the distinguished
of England's sons, and they left all for God."

"Mother," said he, "would that they had been hewers of wood and drawers
of water. Then I should have been content with my lot. Mother, all your
carefully hoarded treasure will not be enough to pay my first term in
college. Without books, without friends, I must give up the hope of an
education," and the large tears trickled between his fingers.

"You forget," she said, "your good friend at C. who has lent you so many
books. Why not apply to him again?"

A deep blush flushed the young man's countenance, but he made no answer,
and seemed to wish to change the subject.

"It is almost evening," he said; "shall we not have prayers?" and,
placing himself near the window to catch the last rays of departing
daylight, he read one of the chapters from the Old Testament.

The aged man, who had not spoken during the discussion, stood up and
prayed with great fervency.

His prayer was made up, indeed, by quotations from the Old Testament,
and he used altogether the phraseology of the Scriptures. He prayed for
the church in the wilderness, "that it might be bright as the sun, fair
as the moon, beautiful as Tirzah, and terrible as an army with banners;"
"that our own exertions to serve the church and our strivings after the
Holy Spirit might not be like arrows in the air, traces in the sea, oil
upon the polished marble, and water spilt upon the ground."

He asked for no temporal blessing; all his petitions were in language
highly figurative, and he closed with a prayer for his grandson, "that
God would make him a polished shaft in the temple of the Lord, a bright
and shining light in the candlestick of the church."

When he had finished his prayer,--"My son," he said, "do not be cast
down; you forget that the great Luther begged his bread. The servants of
the church, in every age, have been poor and despised; even the Son of
God," and he looked reverently upwards, "knew not where to lay his head.
_You_ have only to labor. The peat at the bottom of the meadow is
already dry; there is more than we shall need for winter fuel; take it,
in the morning, to C----, and with the produce buy the book you need."

"No," said the young man, "there are many repairs necessary to make you
and my grandmother comfortable for the winter. I cannot rob you of more.
I can borrow the book."

He lighted his lamp, made from rushes dipped in the green wax of the bay
bush, which affords a beautiful, but not brilliant flame, and went up a
few steps to his chamber in the garret. The old woman gathered the ashes
over the kindling coal, and, with her aged partner, retired to the
bed-room opposite the narrow entrance.




CHAPTER II.

    "Deep thought oft seemed to fix his infant eye;
    Silent when glad, affectionate, though shy:
    And now his look was most demurely sad,
    And now he laughed aloud, yet none knew why.
    The neighbors stared and sighed, yet blessed the lad;
    Some deemed him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad."

    Beattie.


Our young student retired to his garret, a small room in the roof of the
cottage, heated by the summer sun resting on its roof almost to the heat
of a furnace. One small window looking towards the east admitted the
evening breeze.

In the remotest corner was a low and narrow pallet, by the side of which
hung the indispensable articles of a man's apparel.

A small table, covered with ink spots, and a solitary chair stood in the
centre of the little apartment. A few deal shelves contained the odd and
worn volumes of the student's library. A Greek Testament, several
lexicons, half a volume of Horace, lay scattered on the table. Virgil
was the book he had brought with him from the pine-knot torch, and it
was the old Grecian, Homer that he was so anxious to possess.

The uncarpeted floor was thickly strewn with sheets half written over,
and torn manuscripts were scattered about. Wherever the floor was
visible, the frequent ink spots indicated that it was not without mental
agitation that these manuscripts had been produced.

It was not to repose from the labors of the day that the young man
entered his little chamber: to bodily labor must now succeed mental
toil.

He cast a wistful look towards his little pallet; he longed to rest his
limbs, aching with the labor of the day; but no; his lamp was on the
table, and, resolutely throwing off his coarse frock, he sat down to
think and to write.

Wearied by a long day of labor, the student in vain tried to collect his
thoughts, to calm his weakened nerves. He rose and walked his chamber
with rapid steps, the drops of heat and anguish resting on his brow.

"Oh!" said he, "that I had been content to remain the clod, the
toil-worn slave that I am!"

Little do they know, who have leisure and wealth, and all the
appurtenances of literary ease--the lolling study-chair, the convenient
apartment, the brilliant light--how much those suffer who indulge in
aspirations beyond their lowly fortune.

The student sat down again to write. His hands were icy cold, while his
eyes and brow were burning hot. He was engaged on a translation from the
Greek. His efforts to collect and concentrate his thoughts on his work,
exhausted as he was with toil, were vain and unavailing. At length he
threw down his pen.

"Oh God!" thought he, "is this madness? am I losing my memory, my mind?"
Again he walked his little room, but with gentler steps; for he would
not disturb his aged relatives, who slept beneath.

"Have I deceived myself?" he said; "were all my aspirations only
delusions, when, yet a boy, I followed the setting sun, and the rainbow
hues of the evening clouds, with a full heart that could only find
relief in tears?--when I believed myself destined to be other than a
hewer of wood and a drawer of water, because I felt an immeasurable pity
for my fellow-men, groping, as I did myself, under all the evils of
ignorance and sin? Was it only vanity, when I hoped to rise above the
clods of the earth, and aspired to have my lips, as Isaiah's, touched by
a coal from the holy altar? Was it only impatience at my lot which
destined me to inexorable poverty?"

"Let me not despair of myself;" and he took from his table a manuscript
of two or three sheets, and began to read it.

As he went on, his dissatisfaction seemed to increase. With the
sensitiveness and humility of true genius, when under the influence of
despondency, every line seemed to him feeble or exaggerated; all the
faults glared out in bold relief; while the real beauty of the
composition escaped his jaded and toil-worn attention.

"Oh Heaven!" he said, "I have deceived myself; I am no genius, able to
rise above the lowliness of my station. The bitter cup of poverty is at
my lips. I have not even the power to purchase a single book. Shall I go
again to my good friend at C----? Shall I appear as a beggar, or a
peasant, to beg the trifling pittance of a book?"

A burning blush for a moment passed over his pale countenance. "Will
they not say, and justly, 'Go back to your plough; it is your destiny
and proper vocation to labor?'"

He sat down on the side of his little pallet, and burst into tears. He
wept long, and, as he wept, his mind became more calm. The short
summer's night, in its progress, had bathed the earth in darkness, and
cooled the heated roof of his little apartment. The night breeze, as it
came in at his window, chilled him, and he rose to close it.

As he looked from his little window, the dawn was just appearing in the
east, and the planet Venus, shining with the soft light of a crescent
moon, was full before him.

"O beautiful star!" he thought, "the same that went before the sages of
the East, and guided them to the manger of the Savior! I aspire only to
be a teacher of the sublime wisdom of that humble manger. Let me but
lift up my weak voice in his cause, and let all worldly ambition die
within me.

    '---- Thou, O Spirit! who dost prefer,
    Before all temples, th' upright heart and pure,'

I consecrate my powers to thee."

The morning breeze, as it blew on his temples, refreshed him. The young
birds began to make those faint twitterings beneath the downy breast of
the mother, the first faint sound that breaks the mysterious silence of
early dawn.

He turned from the window; the rush-light was just expiring in its rude
candlestick. He threw himself on his bed, and was soon lost in deep and
dreamless slumbers.




CHAPTER III.

    "I give thee to thy God,--the God that gave thee
    A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart!
          And, precious as thou art,
    And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee!
    My own, my beautiful, my undefiled!
          And thou shalt be his child."


While the student sleeps, we will make the reader acquainted with his
short and simple annals.

His maternal grandfather had been among the Puritan emigrants who sought
the rock-bound coast of New England. He was a man of worth and property,
had been educated at Oxford, and distinguished for classical learning
and elegant pursuits. But at the call of conscience he left the
luxurious halls of his fathers, the rank, and ancestral honors that
would have descended to him, to share the hardships, privations, and
sufferings of the meanest of his companions. He brought with him his
wife and an only child, a daughter of twenty years.

Like her mother, she had been carefully nurtured, and had lived in much
luxury, although in the strict seclusion of the daughters of the
Puritans.

The wives and daughters of the