here! Why does not the Black Man have the meeting at his own kitchen
hearth? Ho! ho! Oh dear me! But I'm a Christian woman and no witch; but
those must have been gallant times!"

Doubtless it was a partial wandering of the mind that took the poor old
woman away on this old-witch flight; and it was very curious and pitiful
to witness the compunction with which she returned to herself and took
herself to task for the preference which, in her wild nature, she could
not help giving to harum-scarum wickedness over tame goodness. Now she
tried to compose herself, and talk reasonably and godly.

"Ah, Septimius, my dear child, never give way to temptation, nor consent to
be a wizard, though the Black Man persuade you ever so hard. I know he
will try. He has tempted me, but I never yielded, never gave him his will;
and never do you, my boy, though you, with your dark complexion, and your
brooding brow, and your eye veiled, only when it suddenly looks out with a
flash of fire in it, are the sort of man he seeks most, and that
afterwards serves him. But don't do it, Septimius. But if you could be an
Indian, methinks it would be better than this tame life we lead. 'T would
have been better for me, at all events. Oh, how pleasant 't would have
been to spend my life wandering in the woods, smelling the pines and the
hemlock all day, and fresh things of all kinds, and no kitchen work to
do,--not to rake up the fire, nor sweep the room, nor make the beds,--but
to sleep on fresh boughs in a wigwam, with the leaves still on the
branches that made the roof! And then to see the deer brought in by the
red hunter, and the blood streaming from the arrow-dart! Ah! and the fight
too! and the scalping! and, perhaps, a woman might creep into the battle,
and steal the wounded enemy away of her tribe and scalp him, and be
praised for it! O Seppy, how I hate the thought of the dull life women
lead! A white woman's life is so dull! Thank Heaven, I'm done with it! If