woods, such as blue and black berries. We passed many trees, well
loaded with walnuts and oilnuts, seeming all alive, as it were, with
squirrels, striped, red, and gray, the last having a large, spreading
tail, which Mr. Weare told me they do use as a sail, to catch the wind,
that it may blow them over rivers and creeks, on pieces of bark, in some
sort like that wonderful shell-fish which transformeth itself into a
boat, and saileth on the waves of the sea. We also found grapes, both
white and purple, hanging down in clusters from the trees, over which
the vines did run, nigh upon as large as those which the Jews of old
plucked at Eschol. The air was sweet and soft, and there was a clear,
but not a hot sun, and the chirping of squirrels, and the noise of
birds, and the sound of the waves breaking on the beach a little
distance off, and the leaves, at every breath of the wind in the tree-
tops, whirling and fluttering down about me, like so many yellow and
scarlet-colored birds, made the ride wonderfully pleasant and
entertaining.

Mr. Weare, on the way, told me that there was a great talk of the
bewitching of Goodman Morse's house at Newbury, and that the case of
Caleb Powell was still before the Court, he being vehemently suspected
of the mischief. I told him I thought the said Caleb was a vain,
talking man, but nowise of a wizard. The thing most against him, Mr.
Weare said, was this: that he did deny at the first that the house was
troubled by evil spirits, and even went so far as to doubt that such
things could be at all. "Yet many wiser men than Caleb Powell do deny
the same," I said. "True," answered he; "but, as good Mr. Richardson,
of Newbury, well saith, there have never lacked Sadducees, who believe
not in angel or spirit." I told the story of the disturbance at
Strawberry Bank the night before, and how so silly a thing as a rolling
pumpkin did greatly terrify a whole household; and said I did not doubt