ON A PLEASANT AFTERNOON of June, it was my good fortune to be thecompanion of two young ladies in a walk. The direction of our coursebeing left to me, I led them neither to Legge's Hill, nor to theCold Spring, nor to the rude shores and old batteries of the Neck, noryet to Paradise; though if the latter place were rightly named, myfair friends would have been at home there. We reached the outskirtsof the town, and turning aside from a street of tanners andcurriers, began to ascend a hill, which at a distance, by its darkslope and the even line of its summit, resembled a green rampart alongthe road. It was less steep than its aspect threatened. The eminenceformed part of an extensive tract of pasture land, and was traversedby cow paths in various directions; but, strange to tell, though thewhole slope and summit were of a peculiarly deep green, scarce a bladeof grass was visible from the base upward. This deceitful verdurewas occasioned by a plentiful crop of "woodwax," which wears thesame dark and glossy green throughout the summer, except at oneshort period, when it puts forth a profusion of yellow blossoms. Atthat season, to a distant spectator, the hill appears absolutelyoverlaid with gold, or covered with a glory of sunshine, evenbeneath a clouded sky. But the curious wanderer on the hill willperceive that all the grass, and everything that should nourish man orbeast, has been destroyed by this vile and ineradicable weed: itstufted roots make the soil their own, and permit nothing else tovegetate among them; so that a physical curse may be said to haveblasted the spot, where guilt and frenzy consummated the mostexecrable scene that our history blushes to record. For this was thefield where superstition won her darkest triumph; the high place whereour fathers set up their shame, to the mournful gaze of generationsfar remote. The dust of martyrs was beneath our feet. We stood onGallows Hill.

For my own part, I have often courted the historic influence of thespot. But it is singular how few come on pilgrimage to this famoushill; how many spend their lives almost at its base, and never onceobey the summons of the shadowy past, as it beckons them to thesummit. Till a year or two since, this portion of our history had beenvery imperfectly written, and, as we are not a people of legend ortradition, it was not every citizen of our ancient town that couldtell, within half a century, so much as the date of the witchcraftdelusion. Recently, indeed, an historian has treated the subject ina manner that will keep his name alive, in the only desirableconnection with the errors of our ancestry, by converting the hillof their disgrace into an honorable monument of his own antiquarianlore, and of that better wisdom, which draws the moral while ittells the tale. But we are a people of the present, and have noheartfelt interest in the olden time. Every fifth of November, incommemoration of they know not what, or rather without an ideabeyond the momentary blaze, the young men scare the town with bonfireson this haunted height, but never dream of paying funeral honors tothose who died so wrongfully, and, without a coffin or a prayer,were buried here.

Though with feminine susceptibility, my companions caught all themelancholy associations of the scene, yet these could butimperfectly overcome the gayety of girlish spirits. Their emotionscame and went with quick vicissitude, and sometimes combined to form apeculiar and delicious excitement, the mirth brightening the gloominto a sunny shower of feeling, and a rainbow in the mind. My own moresombre mood was tinged by theirs. With now a merry word and next a sadone, we trod among the tangled weeds, and almost hoped that our feetwould sink into the hollow of a witch's grave. Such vestiges were tobe found within the memory of man, but have vanished now, and withthem, I believe, all traces of the precise spot of the executions.

On the long and broad ridge of the eminence, there is no verydecided elevation of any one point, nor other prominent marks,except the decayed stumps of two trees, standing near each other,and here and there the rocky substance of the hill, peeping just abovethe woodwax.

There are few such prospects of town and village, woodland andcultivated field, steeples and country seats, as we beheld from thisunhappy spot. No blight had fallen on old Essex; all was prosperityand riches, healthfully distributed. Before us lay our native town,extending from the foot of the hill to the harbor, level as a chessboard embraced by two arms of the sea, and filling the whole peninsulawith a close assemblage of wooden roofs, overtopped by many a spire,and intermixed with frequent heaps of verdure, where trees threw uptheir shade from unseen trunks. Beyond was the bay and its islands,almost the only objects, in a country unmarked by strong naturalfeatures, on which time and human toil had produced no change.

Retaining these portions of the scene, and also the peaceful glory andtender gloom of the declining sun, we threw, in imagination, a veil ofdeep forest over the land, and pictured a few scattered villages,and this old town itself a village, as when the prince of hell boresway there. The idea thus gained of its former aspect, its quaintedifices standing far apart, with peaked roofs and projecting stories,and its single meeting-house pointing up a tall spire in the midst;the vision, in short, of the town in 1692, served to introduce awondrous tale of those old times.

I had brought the manuscript in my pocket. It was one of a serieswritten years ago, when my pen, now sluggish and perhaps feeble,because I have not much to hope or fear, was driven by strongerexternal motives, and a more passionate impulse within, than I amfated to feel again. Three or four of these tales had appeared inthe "Token," after a long time and various adventures, but hadencumbered me with no troublesome notoriety, even in my birthplace.

One great heap had met a brighter destiny: they had fed the flames;thoughts meant to delight the world and endure for ages had perishedin a moment, and stirred not a single heart but mine. The story now tobe introduced, and another, chanced to be in kinder custody at thetime, and thus, by no conspicuous merits of their own, escapeddestruction.

The ladies, in consideration that I had never before intruded myperformances on them, by any but the legitimate medium, through thepress, consented to hear me read. I made them sit down on a moss-grownrock, close by the spot where we chose to believe that the deathtree had stood. After a little hesitation on my part, caused by adread of renewing my acquaintance with fantasies that had lost theircharm in the ceaseless flux of mind, I began the tale, which openeddarkly with the discovery of a murder.

A hundred years, and nearly half that time, have elapsed sincethe body of a murdered man was found, at about the distance of threemiles, on the old road to Boston. He lay in a solitary spot, on thebank of a small lake, which the severe frost of December had coveredwith a sheet of ice. Beneath this, it seemed to have been theintention of the murderer to conceal his victim in a chill andwatery grave, the ice being deeply hacked, perhaps with the weaponthat had slain him, though its solidity was too stubborn for thepatience of a man with blood upon his hand. The corpse thereforereclined on the earth, but was separated from the road by a thickgrowth of dwarf pines. There had been a slight fall of snow during thenight, and as if nature were shocked at the deed, and strove to hideit with her frozen tears, a little drifted heap had partly buriedthe body, and lay deepest over the pale dead face. An early traveller,whose dog had led him to the spot, ventured to uncover the features,but was affrighted by their expression. A look of evil and scornfultriumph had hardened on them, and made death so life-like and soterrible, that the beholder at once took flight, as swiftly as ifthe stiffened corpse would rise up and follow.

I read on, and identified the body as that of a young man, astranger in the country, but resident during several precedingmonths in the town which lay at our feet. The story described, at somelength, the excitement caused by the murder, the unavailing questafter the perpetrator, the funeral ceremonies, and other commonplacematters, in the course of which, I brought forward the personageswho were to move among the succeeding events. They were but three. Ayoung man and his sister; the former characterized by a diseasedimagination and morbid feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous,and instilling something of her own excellence into the wild heartof her brother, but not enough to cure the deep taint of his nature.

The third person was a wizard; a small, gray, withered man, withfiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman power to executeit, but senseless as an idiot and feebler than a child to all betterpurposes. The central scene of the story was an interview between thiswretch and Leonard Doane, in the wizard's hut, situated beneath arange of rocks at some distance from the town. They sat beside asmouldering fire, while a tempest of wintry rain was beating on theroof. The young man spoke of the closeness of the tie which united himand Alice, the consecrated fervor of their affection from childhoodupwards, their sense of lonely sufficiency to each other, because theyonly of their race had escaped death, in a night attack by theIndians. He related his discovery or suspicion of a secret sympathybetween his sister and Walter Brome, and told how a distemperedjealousy had maddened him. In the following passage, I threw aglimmering light on the mystery of the tale.

"Searching," continued Leonard, "into the breast of Walter Brome, Iat length found a cause why Alice must inevitably love him. For he wasmy very counterpart! I compared his mind by each individual portion,and as a whole, with mine. There was a resemblance from which I shrunkwith sickness, and loathing, and horror, as if my own features hadcome and stared upon me in a solitary place, or had met me instruggling through a crowd. Nay! the very same thoughts would oftenexpress themselves in the same words from our lips, proving ahateful sympathy in our secret souls. His education, indeed, in thecities of the old world, and mine in this rude wilderness, had wroughta superficial difference. The evil of his character, also, had beenstrengthened and rendered prominent by a reckless and ungoverned life,while mine had been softened and purified by the gentle and holynature of Alice. But my soul had been conscious of the germ of all thefierce and deep passions, and of all the many varieties of wickedness,which accident had brought to their full maturity in him. Nor will Ideny that, in the accursed one, I could see the withered blossom ofevery virtue, which, by a happier culture, had been made to bringforth fruit in me. Now, here was a man whom Alice might love withall the strength of sisterly affection, added to that impure passionwhich alone engrosses all the heart. The stranger would have more thanthe love which had been gathered to me from the many graves of ourhousehold- and I be desolate!"Leonard Doane went on to describe the insane hatred that hadkindled his heart into a volume of hellish flame. It appeared, indeed,that his jealousy had grounds, so far as that Walter Brome hadactually sought the love of Alice, who also had betrayed anundefinable, but powerful interest in the unknown youth. The latter,in spite of his passion for Alice, seemed to return the loathfulantipathy of her brother; the similarity of their dispositions madethem like joint possessors of an individual nature, which could notbecome wholly the property of one, unless by the extinction of theother. At last, with the same devil in each bosom, they chanced tomeet, they two on a lonely road. While Leonard spoke, the wizard hadsat listening to what he already knew, yet with tokens ofpleasurable interest, manifested by flashes of expression across hisvacant features, by grisly smiles and by a word here and there,mysteriously filling up some void in the narrative. But when the youngman told how Walter Brome had taunted him with indubitable proofs ofthe shame of Alice, and, before the triumphant sneer could vanish fromhis face, had died by her brother's hand, the wizard laughed aloud.

Leonard started, but just then a gust of wind came down the chimney,forming itself into a close resemblance of the slow, unvariedlaughter, by which he had been interrupted. "I was deceived,"thought he; and thus pursued his fearful story.

"I trod out his accursed soul, and knew that he was dead; for myspirit bounded as if a chain had fallen from it and left me free.

But the burst of exulting certainty soon fled, and was succeeded bya torpor over my brain and a dimness before my eyes, with thesensation of one who struggles through a dream. So I bent down overthe body of Walter Brome, gazing into his face, and striving to makemy soul glad with the thought, that he, in very truth, lay dead beforeme. I know not what space of time I had thus stood, nor how the visioncame. But it seemed to me that the irrevocable years since childhoodhad rolled back, and a scene, that had long been confused and brokenin my memory, arrayed itself with all its first distinctness.

Methought I stood a weeping infant by my father's hearth; by thecold and blood-stained hearth where he lay dead. I heard thechildish wail of Alice, and my own cry arose with hers, as we beheldthe features of our parent, fierce with the strife and distortedwith the pain, in which his spirit had passed away. As I gazed, a coldwind whistled by, and waved my father's hair. Immediately I stoodagain in the lonesome 91 road, no more a sinless child, but a man ofblood, whose tears were falling fast over the face of his deadenemy. But the delusion was not wholly gone; that face still wore alikeness of my father; and because my soul shrank from the fixed glareof the eyes, I bore the body to the lake, and would have buried itthere. But before his icy sepulchre was hewn, I heard the voice of twotravellers and fled."Such was the dreadful confession of Leonard Doane. And now torturedby the idea of his sister's guilt, yet sometimes yielding to aconviction of her purity; stung with remorse for the death of WalterBrome, and shuddering with a deeper sense of some unutterable crime,perpetrated, as he imagined, in madness or a dream; moved also by darkimpulses, as if a fiend were whispering him to meditate violenceagainst the life of Alice; he had sought this interview with thewizard, who, on certain conditions, had no power to withhold his aidin unravelling the mystery. The tale drew near its close.