pace of a brisk walk, while the constable follows with a whip of knotted
cords. A strong-armed fellow is that constable; and each time that he
flourishes his lash in the air, you see a frown wrinkling and twisting
his brow, and, at the same instant, a smile upon his lips. He loves his
business, faithful officer that he is, and puts his soul into every
stroke, zealous to fulfil the injunction of Major Hawthorne's warrant, in
the spirit and to the letter. There came down a stroke that has drawn
blood! Ten such stripes are to be given in Salem, ten in Boston, and ten
in Dedham; and, with those thirty stripes of blood upon her, she is to be
driven into the forest. The crimson trail goes wavering along the Main
Street; but Heaven grant that, as the rain of so many years has wept upon
it, time after time, and washed it all away, so there may have been a dew
of mercy, to cleanse this cruel blood-stain out of the record of the
persecutor's life!

Pass on, thou spectral constable, and betake thee to thine own place of
torment. Meanwhile, by the silent operation of the mechanism behind the
scenes, a considerable space of time would seem to have lapsed over the
street. The older dwellings now begin to look weather-beaten, through
the effect of the many eastern storms that have moistened their unpainted
shingles and clapboards, for not less than forty years. Such is the age
we would assign to the town, judging by the aspect of John Massey, the
first town-born child, whom his neighbors now call Goodman Massey, and
whom we see yonder, a grave, almost autumnal-looking man, with children
of his own about him. To the patriarchs of the settlement, no doubt, the
Main Street is still but an affair of yesterday, hardly more antique,
even if destined to be more permanent, than a path shovelled through the
snow. But to the middle-aged and elderly men who came hither in
childhood or early youth, it presents the aspect of a long and well-
established work, on which they have expended the strength and ardor of