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I have dwelt somewhat at length on the sturdy fighting ancestry of this weaver, with a distinct sense of pleasure at the quality of his forebears. He is, in the best sense, a pure American, with not a drop of admixture of the blood from recent immigrations. Some of his ancestors were those who made the original Petaquamscut purchase from the Indians, and here he lives on the very land they purchased. It is such examples as this that give dignity to New England rural life, give us a sense of not being offensively new. In my genealogical researches in England I have not found such cases nearly as common as in New England. Surprise and even annoyance is shown in England at your expectation and hope to find descendants of the original owners occupying farm-houses and manors two hundred years old.

Had the weaving been the only portion of the work done in the farm-house it would seem an important addition to the round of domestic duties, but every step in the production of clothing was done at home, as expressed by Miss Hazard of her great-grandfather's household in Narragansett: "From the shepherd who dagged the sheep, the wool-comber who combed the wool, the spinners who spun, the weavers who wove, all in regular order till the travelling tailor made the clothes up, and Thomas Hazard went to meeting in a suit made from wool of his own growing." The "all-wool goods, yard wide," which we so glibly purchase to-day meant to the Narragansett dame the work of months from the time the fleeces were given to her deft fingers. After dag-locks, bands, feltings, tarred locks, were skilfully cut out, the white locks were carefully tossed and separated, and tied in net bags with tallies, to be dyed. The homely saying, "dyed in the wool," indicated a process of much skill. Indigo furnished the blue shades, madder and logwood the red. Sassafras, fustic, hickory, and oak bark furnished yellow and brown. It will be noted that the old-time dyes were all vegetable. After the dyeing mixed colors could be made by spreading in layers and carding them over and over again. In carding wool, the cards should be kept warm and the wool very slightly greased with rape-oil or "swines'-grease." At last the wool was carded into light rolls and was ready for the wheel.

An old writer says, "The action of spinning must be learned by practice, not by relation." The grace and beauty of wool-spinning, ever sung by the poets, need not be described. Stepping lightly backward and forward, with arms at times high in the air, now low at the side, often by the light only of the fire, the worker, no matter what her age, seemed the perfection of the grace of motion; and the beauty of the occupation makes the name of spinster a title of honor and dignity.

The preparation of flax was infinitely more tedious and more complicated. From the time the tender plant springs up, through pulling, spreading, drying, rippling, stacking, rotting, cleaning, braking, swingling, beetling, ruffling, hetchelling, spreading, and drawing, there are in all over twenty dexterous manipulations till the flax is ready for the wheel, the most skilful manipulation of all, and is wrapped round the spindle. Flax thread was spun on the small flax-wheel. "Lint on the wee wheel, woo' on the muckle." It was reeled into skeins on a clock-reel, which ticked when the requisite number had been wound, when the spinner stopped and tied the skein. A quaint old ballad has the refrain:

"And he kissed Mistress Polly when the clock-reel ticked."

These knots of linen thread had to be bleached before they were woven. They were soaked in water for days, and constantly wrung out; they were washed again and again in the brook; they were "bucked" with ashes and hot water in a bucking-tub; they were seethed, soaked, rinsed, dried, and wound on bobbins and quills for the loom. In spite of all this bleaching, the linen web, when woven, would not be white, and it afterward went through twoscore more processes of bucking, possing, rinsing, drying, and grassing. In all, forty bleaching manipulations were necessary for "light linens." Thus, at least, sixteen months had passed since the flax-seed had been sown, during which the good-wife had not "eaten the bread of idleness."

With the passing of these old-time household arts of spinning and weaving, went also the household independence. Well timed was our struggle for freedom from British rule, when every man and wife on their own farm held everything necessary for life and comfort--food, shelter, fuel, illumination, clothing. What need had he or she to fear any king? It could not be such an independent revolt to-day; in the matter of clothing alone, no family could be independent of outside assistance.

The old-time preparatory work of the weaver is much simplified for this Narragansett weaver in modern times, by the use of machine-spun threads and yarns. The warp of these bed coverlets is of strong twine or thread, while the weft is of various woollen yarns or zephyrs or crewels, bought at mills. These latter are aniline-dyed, and in no artistic sense equal the old indigo, hickory, sassafras, or madder home-dyed wools of yore. These skeins of yarn are prepared for use by spreading them on a reel or swifts, and winding the yarn off on quills in a quilling-wheel, which is somewhat like a simplified spinning-wheel.

Besides these weavers who worked in their own homes, making their own wool into cloth to sell, or weaving the thread and yarn brought to them by their neighbors, there was a distinct class of travelling weavers, who went from house to house working for a few shillings a day and their "keep." They often were quaint and curious characters; frequently what were known as "natural preachers;" that is, either mystic or fanatic souls who tried to supplement or supersede the religious teaching of the community by itinerant preaching. Such teachers and preachers have ever flourished in Narragansett since the day of Samuel Gorton and his associates.

One of these weaver-preachers, undismayed by the indifference and even the disapproval of his neighbors, built a rude log pulpit in the woods near his home and there communed aloud with God if not with man. The sound of his fervid prayers and invocations could be heard afar off by passers-by in the wood-lanes and roads, even in mid-winter; while the emphasizing thumps of his sturdy fist kept his blood as warm as his religion and startled the Narragansett squirrels and chipmunks who thriftily used the recesses of the weaver's pulpit as a storage-place for nuts and acorns. There were few women weavers among them, especially for linen-weaving, which was hard work. Occasionally some sturdy woman, of masculine muscle and endurance, was a weaver.

One of these Narragansett women-weavers was a witch. She would sit for hours bending over her loom, silent, peering into it and not doing a single row. This angered the dames for whom she worked, but they said nothing, lest they get her ill-will. Suddenly she would sit up and start her treadle; bang! bang! would go her batten as fast as corn in a corn-popper; and at night, after she had gone home, when her piece was still set in the loom, the family would waken and hear the half-toned clapping of the loom, which someone was running softly to help the witch out in her stint, probably the old black man. So, behold! at the end of the week more cloth appeared on the cloth-beam, more linen was ready for bleaching, and more rolls of carpet were woven than could be turned out by any man-weaver in the province. So whether it was hitching up with the devil or not, she always had employment in plenty; and her fine linen table-cloths were in every bridal outfit, and her linen web used in many a shroud throughout Narragansett.

She never ate with the family of her employer as did every other worker in house or on farm, nor was it evident that she brought food with her. The minister suspected she ate nocake, which she could easily hide in her pockets. She never asked for water, nor cider, nor switchel, nor kill-devil, nor had anyone ever seen her drink. Debby Nichols once saw a bumble-bee fly buzz-buzz out of her mouth as she wove in the minister's loom-loft. But the minister said it was only a hornet flying past her--the garret was full of them. But, sure enough, at that very hour Joe Spink fell from his horse on the old Pequot trail from Wickford and broke his leg. Joe said a big bumble-bee stung the horse on the nose and made him rear and plunge. Joe had had high words with the witch over some metheglin he had tried to buy from her the previous week, for she brewed as well as she wove. The minister said that if metheglin had been the only drink Joe ever bought he wouldn't have fallen from his horse, and that it wasn't the first bee Joe had had in his bonnet.

One day some careless darkies in a kitchen set on fire a hank of tow that was being hetchelled by the chimney-side. The sudden blaze extended to a row of freshly ironed sheets, then to a wool-wheel, and soon a dense smoke and darting flames filled the room. All ran out of the house, some for water, some for buckets, some for help, and no one thought of the witch in the loom-loft. The bang and rattle of her work made her ignorant of the noise and commotion below, and as the smoke entered the loft she thought, "But that chimney do smoke!" Finally a conviction of danger came to her and she made her way down the loft-ladder and through the entry with difficulty to the open air.

"Where's the cat?" was her abrupt greeting to the shamefaced folk who began to apologize spasmodically for their neglect to alarm her. "I saw her an hour ago on the spare bed in the fore room"--and back into the house rushed the witch, to return in a few moments with Tabby safely in her arms. This act of course deserved scant praise. Everyone murmured that there was probably some good reason for doing it, that everyone knew witches and cats had close relations, that the house didn't burn down anyway, and probably she knew it wasn't going to.

One night a neighbor met her, breathing heavily, her hand at her side, hobbling haltingly homeward. He told his wife he guessed the witch was pretty sick. She told the minister's wife that the witch was getting her deserts. The latter in turn told her husband, and during a ministerial visit the next day he discoursed profitably on the probable illness and the unsanctified life of that misguided woman. The minister sat long in the front room sipping sangaree, but the hard-working little tailoress in the kitchen overheard his moralizing and his story. And when goose and shears were laid aside, and her day's work was over, she hurried through the winter gloaming, across the ice-crusts of three fields, to the witch's door. No light shone from the window, either of evil or domestic significance; but the tailoress pulled the latch-string and pushed open the door, and by the light of her hand-lantern found the witch in the chilled house cold and dead.

The following August a band of wondering, marauding boys, with alternate hesitation and bravado, entered the tenantless house. The windows had all been broken by missiles thrown by witch-hating passers-by, and the spring rains and summer suns had freely entered the room. And lo! the witches bed, on which she died--a sack full of straw of mouse-barley, with occasional spikes of grain attached--had sprouted and grown through the coarse hempen bed-tick, and was as green and flourishing as the grass over her unmarked grave.

WHERE THREE TOWNS MEET

In the heart of Narragansett three towns meet at a cross-roads; they are North Kingston, South Kingston, and Exeter. It is a lonely cross-roads, even in days of summer, though Weaver Rose's cheerful home is near it; but it is picturesque and beautiful in its extended view, its overreach of splendid locust-trees, and the tangle of wild flowers fringing the roadside and rioting along the stone walls. There is no monument or stone, nothing to mark the special tradition of this corner, as Squaw Rock at Indian Corner, half a mile farther on the road, a sinister rock with dark, blood-red veins and splashes, a rock whereon were dashed the brains of a Narragansett squaw by her drunken brave of a husband.

This cross-roads, or "corner," has been the scene many times of episodes as uncivilized, if not as cruel, as the one that immortalized Squaw Rock. Here--a spot chosen either through fancy, tradition, or even rustic fashion, or because here three townships meet--have taken place several of those absurd bequests of barbaric peoples known as shift-marriages.

It is not specified in this certificate that this grotesque proceeding took place at night, but, out of some regard for decency, and to avoid notoriety, such was usually the case.

"Thomas Calverwell was joyned in marriage to Abigail Calverwell his wife the 22. February, 1719-20. He took her in marriage after she had gone four times across the highway in only her shift and hair-lace and no other clothing. Joyned together in marriage by me.

This was but two years after the marriage of Widow Clarke, and the public parade may have taken place on the same spot, but there is a slight variation, in that the fair Abigail's ordeal was prolonged to four times crossing the road. The naming of the hair-lace seems trivial and superfluous with such other complete disrobing, but it was more significant than may appear to a careless reader. At that date women wore caps even in early girlhood, and were never seen in public without them. To be capless indicated complete dishabille. A court record still exists wherein is an entry of a great insult offered to the town constables by an angry and contemptuous woman. She threatened to pull off her head-gear and go before them, "only in her hair-lace and hair, like a parcel of pitiful, beggarly curs that they were." So the abandon of only a hair-lace comported well with Abigail Calverwell's only a shift.

Hopkinton is another Narragansett town, in the same county. In 1780 David Lewis married at Hopkinton, Widow Jemima Hill, "where four roads meet," at midnight, she being dressed only in her shift. This was to avoid payment of Husband Hill's debts. Ten years later, in a neighboring town, Richmond, still in the South County, Widow Sarah Collins appeared in the twilight in a long shift, a special wedding-shift covering her to her feet, and was then and thus married to Thomas Kenyon.

Westerly, still in the same Narragansett county, had the same custom and the same belief.

"To all People whom It May Concern. This Certifies that Nathanell Bundy of Westerly took ye Widdow Mary Parmenter of sd town on ye highway with no other clothing but shifting or smock on ye Evening of ye 20 day of Aprill, 1724, and was joined together in that honorable Estate of matrimony in ye presence of

"JOHN COREY. "GEORGE COREY. "MARY HILL. "PETER CRANDALL. "MARY CRANDALL."

The use of the word smock here recalls the fact that in England these marriages were always called smock-marriages.

The Swedish traveller, Kalm, writing in 1748, tells of one Pennsylvania bridegroom who saved appearances by meeting the scantily clad widow half-way from her house to his own, and announcing formally that the wedding-garments which he thereupon presented to her were not given to her but were only lent to her for this occasion. This is much like the ancient custom of marriage investiture, still in existence in Eastern Hindostan.

Another husband who thus formally lent wedding-garments to a widow-bride was Major Moses Joy, who married Widow Hannah Ward in Newfane, Vt., in 1789. The widow stood in her shift, within a closet, and held out her hand through a diamond-shaped hole in the door to the Major, who had gallantly deposited the garments for Madam to don before appearing as a bride. In Vermont many similar marriages are recorded, the bride not being required to cross the highway. One of these unclad brides left the room by a window, and dressed on the upper rounds of a ladder, a somewhat difficult feat even for a "lightning-change artist." In Maine the custom also prevailed. One half-frozen bride, on a winter's night in February, was saved for a long and happy life by having the pitying minister, who was about to marry her, throw a coat over her as she stood in her shift on the king's highway. In early New York, in Holland, in ancient Rhynland, this avoidance of debt-paying was accomplished in less annoying fashion by a widow's appearing in borrowed clothing at her husband's funeral, or laying a straw or key on the coffin and kicking it off.

The traveller, Gustavus Vasa, records a shift marriage which he saw in New York in 1784. A woman, clad only in her shift, appeared at the gallows just as an execution was about to take place, demanded the life of the criminal, and was then and there married to him. It is well known that in England criminals sentenced to death were rescued from the gallows by the appearance at the time and place of execution of women who claimed the right of marrying them, and thus saving their lives.

It has been asserted that these shift-marriages were but an ignorant folk-custom, and that there never was any law or reason for the belief that the observance procured immunity from payment of past debts. But it is plainly stated in many of these Narragansett certificates that it was "according to the law in such cases." The marriages were certainly degrading in character, and were gone through with only for the express purpose of debt evasion, and they must have been successful. The chief actors in these Narragansett comedies were, from scant negative testimony of their life and the social position of their families, not necessarily of limited means. Any man of wealth might not, however, wish to pay the debts of his matrimonial "predecessor," as the first husband is termed in one case.

And it should be remembered also that at the time these weddings took place there was nothing boorish in the community. Considering the necessary differences in the centuries, the "South County" was not nearly as "countrified," to use a conventional term, then as now. Exeter has ever been sparsely settled, with many woodlands, meagre farms, and little wealth, though it had one church with a thousand members; but North Kingston had a thrifty and enterprising general population, with many men of wealth, and handsome houses. South Kingston, the nearest town-centre to the cross-roads, was settled by men of opulence and of polite culture. It was the richest town in the State of Rhode Island, paying, as late as 1780, double the taxes assigned to Newport and one-third more than Providence. The cross-roads, where the three towns meet, was not far from St. Paul's Church, where the planters and their families gathered each Sunday, riding to it over the very highway where the shift-marriages took place.

TUGGIE BANNOCKS'S MOONACK

Tuggie Bannocks, the Narragansett negress, decided to work a charm on old Bosum Sidet, the negro tinker. She was not going to charm him in the ordinary commonplace way, albeit pleasing, that most dames follow--be they old or young, black or white--to allure human beings of the opposite sex. Her charm was, alas, a malignant one, a "conjure," that she angrily decided to work upon him as a revenge for his clumsy and needless destruction of her best copper tea-kettle while he was attempting, or I suspect pretending, to repair it. This charm was not a matter of a moment's hasty decision and careless action; it required some minute and varied preparation and considerable skill to carry it out successfully, and work due and desired evil.

Tuggie's first step, literally, was to walk over the snowy fields, the frozen roads, to Bosum's house to obtain some twigs or sprigs of withered grass that had grown and still lingered in his dooryard. Lest Bosum's wife should suspect any uncanny motive for her visit, she carefully elaborated a plan, and carried on, in its furtherance, a long conversation with regard to a certain coveted dye-stuff which Mother Sidet manufactured; it turned all woollen stuffs a vivid green, and was in much demand throughout Narragansett to dye old woollen rags and worn-out flannel sheets and shirts this brilliant, verdant hue, when they could thereafter be used to most astonishing and satisfactory advantage in conferring variety in the manufacture of those triumphs of decorative art, those outlets of rural color-sense, home-made woven rag-carpets, and hooked and braided rugs. Tuggie argued with much dignity and volubility that she should be told the secret of this dye-stuff as some slight compensation for her ruined tea-kettle. It is needless to state that she was unsuccessful, nor had she expected to be otherwise. The secret of the dye was Molly Sidet's stock-in-trade, just as the soldering-iron and solder were her husband's.

At Molly's refusal Tuggie waxed wroth, and a most unpleasant exchange of personalities took place, which culminated in Tuggie's exasperating reference to an event which had occurred in Bosum's youth, and about which he and his wife were exceedingly and naturally sensitive. He had once gone proudly to Boston for a three months' visit to ply his trade and see the town. At the end of two weeks he had reappeared in Narragansett, kit in hand and depressed in appearance. When interrogated as to the reason of his sudden and speedy return, he had answered, acrimoniously, that "Boston folks is too full of notions." In the course of a few weeks, however, news came to Narragansett that Bosum had been arrested in Boston for his well-known trick of stealing, and had been whipped through the town at the cart-tail. Nothing could anger Molly Sidet more than a reference to "Boston notions." Tuggie used this thorn in the side with well-planned judiciousness and with the pleasing and wholly satisfactory result that Molly ordered her fiercely out of the house. This was precisely what she desired, for a witch cannot work a full, a thoroughly successful conjure on one who has always treated her well and kindly, and shown her due hospitality; hence old Tuggie, by Molly's abrupt expulsion of her from her house, was left free to work her wicked will.

Though Tuggie did not get the coveted dye-stuff, nor the recipe therefor, she did not return home empty-handed; she managed to pick without discovery a few leafless twigs from the great bush of southernwood that grew by the stone doorstep of Bosum Sidet's house, and she felt that her visit had not been in vain. Fortune favored her. As she passed the door of the tinker's barn she slipped in unobserved and clipped a few hairs from the tail of his cow. It would have been much better, much surer, to have had these hairs from Bosum's own head, but to aspire to a fibre of his close-cropped wool was useless.

As Tuggie Bannocks walked home over the crisp snow she muttered to herself with delight, and she glowered and scowled at the children as she passed the school-house at the corner, and they hooted and jeered at her in return, and called out, "Te-Rap, Te-Rap," which everyone knows is the greeting that witches cry out to each other.

She certainly was deemed a witch by her neighbors as well as the children. And this reputation was not accidental, it was jealously cultivated. She conformed her mien and behavior to all that was expected of a witch; and she had been gifted by nature with one feature which, much to her satisfaction, enabled her to exhibit convincing proofs of her pretensions. She had two full rows of double teeth , which could be displayed to telling and bewildering advantage to those who thought her "just like other folks."

She did have some uncanny habits; some that, a century previous, in a Puritan community, would have set her afloat to sink or swim.

She never sat upon stool or chair or settle in anyone's house; no one had ever seen her seated save on a table or dresser or bed, or even on a cradle-head--this to the painful apprehension of the mother who owned the cradle. When spinning flax in one house she sat on a saw-horse. She had not a chair in her house, but there was an oaken chair-moulding at the top of the wainscoting in her spacious old kitchen; and it was currently reported and believed that when she was alone she perched or clung with her heels on this moulding. The Newport chap-man, Chepa Rose, told at the Ferry that he saw her one night running round the room on the moulding. But Chepa was not truthful, so I do not believe it.

Tuggie dwelt alone in the ell part of an old gambrel-roofed house, which had seen better days, but was now deserted and sadly dilapidated, and was indeed in its main portion almost roofless. The ell, which contained the great raftered kitchen and two other rooms, was, however, tight and comfortable, and made a cheerful, picturesque home. Tuggie, who was strong and capable, worked for the farmers' wives around; dipped candles, made soap, spun yarn and wove carpets, brewed and salted; she also cultivated a little patch of land of her own, and knit stockings to sell, and was altogether a very thrifty, industrious person. She was in reality far more afraid of being bewitched than she was confident of bewitching, and that evening, as she prepared to "burn a project" to conjure old Bosum Sidet, she started at every sound, and turned her petticoats inside out, to keep off evil spirits, and at last hung a bag of egg-shells around her neck as a potent saving-charm.

She first mixed a little flour and water into dough and stirred in the hairs from the cow's tail--these were the straw for her brick; then she moulded the dough into the shape of a heart and stuck two pins in for legs and two for arms; this would surely give Bosum "misery in de legs and arms"--in short, rheumatism. This dough-heart she set aside, for it was not properly part of the project, and would only fulfil its diabolical mission when it was carried to Bosum's door and set upon his fence or doorstep, when the "misery" would begin.

She then, with rather a quaking heart, prepared to burn the project. The sprigs of southernwood from Bosum's door-yard, a few rusty nails, the tail of a smoked herring, a scrap of red flannel, a little mass of "grave-dirt" that she had taken from one of the many graveyards that are dotted all over Narragansett, and, last of all, that chief ingredient, the prime factor in all negro charms--a rabbit's foot--were thrown into a pot of water that was hung upon the crane over a roaring fire. Of course everyone in Narragansett knew that when a project began to boil the conjured one would begin to suffer some mental or bodily ill; hence Tuggie listened with much satisfaction to the premonitory bubbling within the pot.

She stepped into the centre of the room on account of the heat of the fire, and because it is not good luck to watch a boiling project; and as she stood in the red glow of the firelight she was the personification of negro superstition. Tall and gaunt, with long bony arms, and skinny claws of hands, with a wrinkled, malicious, yet half-frightened countenance, surrounded by little pig-tails of gray wool that stuck out from under her scarlet turban, with her old petticoat turned inside out, and a gay little shawl pinned on her shoulders, she stood like a Voodoo priestess eagerly watching and listening. When the boiling fairly began, she commenced swaying, rocking herself backward and forward, patting the floor with heavy foot, almost dancing while she muttered and sung, in a low voice, a few gibberish charms that had been taught by her mother, Queen Abigail. She rolled her eyes up in a superstitious ecstasy, and swung her long arms to the rhythm of her heathenish song, when suddenly a shock like an earth-quake struck her door; it flew violently open, and some long, heavy object rushed in, struck Tuggie violently on her tender shins, and threw her, face downward, on the floor. She was for a moment stunned with the fall and with the suddenness of the assault, but when she regained her senses she still lay on the floor with eyes tightly closed and her face covered with her hands, for this violent assailant was surely that terrifying creature, a "moonack," that she had raised and brought by her wicked conjuring, and if she glanced at it, it would cause her instant death.

Perfect stillness had succeeded the assault. The old negress groaned and tried to pray. She repeated some old Voodoo charms, the Creed, all kinds of words to ward off evil spirits, and at last pleaded aloud, "Oh, Mass' Debbil, you only lets me go dis time, I won't nebber burn no projects no more; I warn't a-goin' to hurt Bosum anyway, I only wants to git a new tea-kettle outen him. I'll frow de project out, and burn up de dough-baby, an' lug back dat wool I stole from Debby Nickkels, an' I won't nebber purtend I'se a witch agin. Oh! Mass' Moonack! Don't take me dis time." At this juncture she again became speechless with terror, for she heard soft, irregular footsteps entering the door. She groaned and moaned, but did not open her eyes.

Four pale and staring boys, Tom and Jeffrey Hazard, Zeke Gardiner, and Pel Noyes, stole softly in on tiptoe, caught hold of the clumsy caricature of a bob-sled that had so fiercely assaulted Tuggie's shins and knocked her down, dragged it out of the house and disappeared with it down the road. Jeffrey Hazard, who had in him throughout his entire life a far more active and real devil than any evil spirit that Tuggie conjured or dreamed of, could not resist, ere he left the house, catching the old woman by the foot as he passed her and pulling her as if to take her off with him, until her groans of fright made him desist.

Old Tuggie listened to the light footsteps and the dragging noise in agony. With close-shut eyes she listened to the steps of the devils and moonacks as they gradually went away from the house. The cold, icy night-air blew in upon her as she lay on the floor, the water burned down in the pot, and a nauseous odor of burning fish and flesh filled the house. At last she tremblingly arose, closed the door, swung the pot off the fire, seized a horseshoe and prayer-book, and went to bed.

The week previous Pel Noyes had been to Boston, and had returned with his brain and tongue full of a fine sled for coasting that he had seen in that great metropolis. With four old sleigh-runners and a few boards he had rigged an imitation of the beautiful "double-runner," and the four boys sallied out that winter night to use and enjoy it. They intended to skim past Witch Tuggie's door with a shrill and annoying shriek of defiance, but alas! their clumsy steering-apparatus broke when they were half-way down the hill, and the contrary sled, rudderless and uncontrolled, instead of gliding past the witch's door banged into it, with the full success that we know. The boys were thrown into the snow outside the door, and their first impulse was to abandon their newly manufactured sled and run for their lives; but they were quick to discover, from manner and word, that Tuggie was more frightened than they were, and they stole in softly and rescued the sled out of the very witch's den.

A BLACK POLITICIAN

On a bright June morning in the year 1811, old Cuddymonk sat in the cheerful sunlight at the open door of his house, on the banks of Lake Petaquamscut, in old Narragansett. Cuddymonk was a negro; but a Narragansett negro was, at that date, of almost another race than a Southern negro. He was free; he was usually respected and self-respecting; he might, and often did, own a house and farm of his own; and he had a certain independent social position which was far from being a despised one, for he enjoyed, with his rich white neighbors, who had been slave-owners, a friendly intimacy that was denied to a poor white man. He was, however, somewhat lazy, occasionally untruthful, and even dishonest--like his Southern colored brother. Cuddymonk was a typical Narragansett negro--sharp, shrewd, and in the main thrifty. He was deeply and consistently superstitious, and knew a thousand tales of ghosts and spirits and witches and Manitous, old traditions of African Voodooism and Indian pow-wows. He was profoundly learned in the meaning of dreams and omens and predictions, and he did not hesitate to practise--or attempt to practise--all kinds of witch-charms and "conjures" and "projects," though he was a member in good standing, as he proudly stated, of "de Pistikle Church."

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