his posterity could ever cross it again. But that was all nonsense!"

"Strange old things one dreams in a chimney-corner," quoth the doctor. "Do
you remember any more of this?"

"No, no; I'm so forgetful nowadays," said old Mrs. Hagburn; "only it seems
as if I had my memories in my pipe, and they curl up in smoke. I've known
these Feltons all along, or it seems as if I had; for I'm nigh ninety
years old now, and I was two year old in the witch's time, and I have seen
a piece of the halter that old Felton was hung with."

Some of the company laughed.

"That must have been a curious sight," quoth the doctor.

"It is not well," said the minister seriously to the doctor, "to stir up
these old remembrances, making the poor old lady appear absurd. I know not
that she need to be ashamed of showing the weaknesses of the generation to
which she belonged; but I do not like to see old age put at this
disadvantage among the young."

"Nay, my good and reverend sir," returned the doctor, "I mean no such
disrespect as you seem to think. Forbid it, ye upper powers, that I should
cast any ridicule on beliefs,--superstitions, do you call them?--that are
as worthy of faith, for aught I know, as any that are preached in the
pulpit. If the old lady would tell me any secret of the old Felton's
science, I shall treasure it sacredly; for I interpret these stories about
his miraculous gifts as meaning that he had a great command over natural
science, the virtues of plants, the capacities of the human body."