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CHAPTER IV.
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM.
"Men spake in whispers—each one feared to meet another's eye;
As iron seemed the sterile earth, as brass the sullen sky.
But patience had her perfect work, abundant faith was given;
Oh! who shall say the scourge of earth doth not bear fruit for heaven?"
As the occurrences at Salem village,
of which mention has been made
in a previous chapter, and of
which Alice Campbell, on her
return from Nurse's Farm, had brought
the first tidings to her grandmother, were
destined to assume an importance far more
than commensurate with their apparently
trivial beginning; and as "the little cloud
scarcely bigger than a man's hand" was
afterward to spread and deepen, until its
baneful influence overwhelmed for a time
the powers of truth, reason, and justice, and
the whole land sat trembling in the horror
