"What's that you mutter to yourself, Matthew
Maule?" asked Scipio. "And what for do you look so
black at me?"

"No matter, darky!" said the carpenter. "Do you
think nobody is to look black but yourself? Go tell your
master I'm coming; and if you happen to see Mistress
Alice, his daughter, give Matthew Maule's humble re-
spects to her. She has brought a fair face from Italy,
fair, and gentle, and proud, -- has that same Alice Pyn-
cheon!"

"He talk of Mistress Alice!" cried Scipio, as he returned
from his errand. "The low carpenter-man! He no
business so much as to look at her a great way off!"

This young Matthew Maule, the carpenter, it must be
observed, was a person little understood, and not very
generally liked, in the town where he resided; not that
anything could be alleged against his integrity, or his skill
and diligence in the handicraft which he exercised. The
aversion (as it might justly be called) with which many
persons regarded him was partly the result of his own char-
acter and deportment, and partly an inheritance.

He was the grandson of a former Matthew Maule, one
of the early settlers of the town, and who had been a
famous and terrible wizard in his day. This old reprobate
was one of the sufferers when Cotton Mather, and his
brother ministers, and the learned judges, and other wise
men, and Sir William Phipps, the sagacious governor,
made such laudable efforts to weaken the great enemy of
souls, by sending a multitude of his adherents up the rocky
pathway of Gallows Hill. Since those days, no doubt, it
had grown to be suspected that, in consequence of an un-
fortunate overdoing of a work praiseworthy in itself, the

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