Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/17

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Scotland; this is nae hame—it is jist an awfu' gruesom' kintra! I hate it—I hate it! I winna bide here—it maks me sair sick; look there, an' see if it is na' awfu'?" and as she spoke she put her little, strong arm round her grandmother's neck, and forcibly turned her head to the window to which she pointed.

The view from the window, thus indicated by the impatient little hand, was certainly lugubrious enough to warrant the child's distaste. The house in which the two speakers were sitting was the very last one in the row which then constituted the straggling, narrow, crooked little Main (now Essex) Street of the small, irregular, and unpretending little town of Salem, and stood, consequently, nearest to the water; and the view from the window to which the childish hand so impetuously pointed consisted of a plain of discolored but untrodden snow, stretching from the house down to the very shore, where, piled up in wild and chaotic confusion, were huge black rocks, coated on one side with gathered snow and sleet, and mingled with them massive cakes of shat-