all the faces around, told her weird stories
while they were awaiting the rising of the
dough, perchance, out of which the household
bread had to be made. There ran through them
always a ghastly, unexpressed suggestion of some
human sacrifice being needed to complete the
success of any incantation to the Evil One; and
the poor old creature, herself believing and
shuddering as she narrated her tale in broken
English, took a strange, unconscious pleasure in her
power over her hearers—young girls of the
oppressing race, which had brought her down into
a state little differing from slavery, and reduced
her people to outcasts on the hunting-grounds
which had belonged to her ancestors.

After such tales it required no small effort on
Lois's part to go out at her aunt's command into
the common pasture round the town and bring
the cattle home at night. Who knew but what
the double-headed snake might start up from
each blackberry-bush—that wicked, cunning,
accursed creature in the service of the Indian
wizards, that had such power over all those
white maidens who met the eyes placed at either
end of his long, sinuous, creeping body, so that,
loathe him, loathe the Indian race as they would,
off they must go into the forest to seek out some
Indian man, and must beg to be taken into his
wigwam, abjuring faith and race for ever? Or
there were spells—so Nattee said—hidden about
the ground by the wizards, which changed that
person's nature who found them; that, gentle
and loving as they might have been before,
thereafter they took no pleasure but in the cruel
torments of others, and had a strange power
given to them of causing such torments at their
will. Once Nattee, speaking low to Lois, who
was alone with her in the kitchen, whispered out
her terrified belief that such a spell had Prudence
found; and when the Indian showed her arms to
Lois, all pinched black and blue by the impish
child, the English girl began to be afraid of her
cousin as of one possessed. But it was not
Nattee alone, nor young imaginative girls alone,
that believed in these stories. We can afford to
smile at them now; but our English ancestors
entertained superstitions of much the same
character at the same period, and with less excuse,
as the circumstances surrounding them were
better known, and consequently more explicable
by common sense than the real mysteries of the
deep, untrodden forests of New England. The
gravest divines not only believed stories similar
to that of the double-headed serpent, and other
tales of witchcraft, but they made such narrations
the subjects of preaching and prayer; and
as cowardice makes us all cruel, men who were
blameless in many of their relations of life, and
even praiseworthy in some, became, from superstition,
cruel persecutors about this time, showing
no mercy towards any one whom they believed
to be in league with the Evil One.

Faith was the person with whom the English
girl was the most intimately associated in her
uncle's house. The two were about the same
age, and certain household employments were
shared between them. They took it in turns to
call in the cows, to make up the butter which
had been churned by Hosea, a stiff old out-door
servant, in whom Grace Hicksou placed great
confidence; and each lassie had her great spinning-
wheel for wool, and her lesser for flax, before a
month had elapsed after Lois's coming, Faith
was a grave, silent person, never merry,
sometimes very sad, though Lois was a long time in
even guessing why. She would try in her sweet,
simple fashion to cheer her cousin up, when the
latter was depressed, by telling her old stories
of English ways and life. Occasionally, Faith
seemed to care to listen, occasionally she did
not heed one word, but dreamed on. Whether
of the past or of the future, who could tell?

Stern old ministers came in to pay their
pastoral visits. On such occasions Grace Hickson
would put on clean apron and clean cap, and
make them more welcome than she was ever
seen to do any one else, bringing out the best
provisions of her store, and setting of all before
them. Also, the great Bible was brought forth,
and Hosea and Nattee summoned from their
work to listen while the minister read a chapter,
and, as he read, expounded it at considerable
length. After this all knelt, while he, standing,
lifted up his right hand, and prayed for all
possible combinations of Christian men, for all
possible cases of spiritual need; and lastly, taking
the individuals before him, he would put up a
very personal supplication for each, according to
his notion of their wants. At first Lois wondered
at the aptitude of one or two of his prayers of
this description to the outward circumstances of
each case; but when she perceived that her
aunt had usually a pretty long confidential
conversation with the minister in the early part of
his visit, she became aware that he received
both his impressions and his knowledge through
the medium of " that godly woman, Grace Hickson;"
and I am afraid she paid less regard to
the prayer " for the maiden from another land,
who hath brought the errors of that land as a
seed with her, even across the great ocean, and
who is letting even now the little seed shoot up
into an evil tree, in which all unclean creatures
may find shelter."

"I like the prayers of our Church better,"
said Lois, one day to Faith. " No clergyman
in England can pray his own words, and therefore
it is that he cannot judge of others so as to
fit his prayers to what he esteems to be their
case, as Mr. Tappau did this morning."

"I hate Mr. Tappau," said Faith, shortly, a
passionate flash of light coming out of her dark,
heavy eyes.

"Why so, cousin? It seems to me as if he
were a good man, although I like not his prayers."

Faith only repeated her words, "I hate him."

Lois was sorry for this strong bad feeling;
instinctively sorry, for she was loving herself,
delighted in being loved, and felt a jar run
through her at every sign of want of love in
others. But she did not know what to say, and
was silent at the time. Faith, too, went on
turning her wheel with vehemence, but spoke
never a word until her thread snapped, and