Free Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

eligible, was the province of
Massachusetts Bay.
    The fines, imprisonments and stripes liberally distributed by our
pious forefathers, the popular antipathy, so strong that it endured
nearly a hundred years after actual persecution had ceased, were
attractions as powerful for the Quakers as peace, honor and reward
would have been for the worldly-minded. Every European vessel brought
new cargoes of the sect, eager to testify against the oppression which
they hoped to share; and when shipmasters were restrained by heavy
fines from affording them passage, they made long and circuitous
journeys through the Indian country, and appeared in the province as
if conveyed by a supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened
almost to madness by the treatment which they received, produced
actions contrary to the rules of decency as well as of rational
religion, and presented a singular contrast to the calm and staid
deportment of their sectarian successors of the present day. The
command of the Spirit, inaudible except to the soul and not to be
controverted on grounds of human wisdom, was made a plea for most
indecorous exhibitions which, abstractedly considered, well deserved
the moderate chastisement of the rod. These extravagances, and the
persecution which was at once their cause and consequence, continued
to increase, till in the year 1659 the government of Massachusetts Bay
indulged two members of the Quaker sect with the crown of martyrdom.
    An indelible stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented to
this act, but a large share of the awful responsibility must rest upon
the person then at the head of the government. He was a man of narrow
mind and imperfect education, and his uncompromising bigotry was made
hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions; he exerted his
influence indecorously and unjustifiably to compass the death of the
enthusiasts, and his whole conduct in respect to them was marked by
brutal cruelty. The Quakers, whose revengeful feelings were not less
deep because they were inactive, remembered this man and his
associates in after-times. The historian of the sect affirms that by
the wrath of Heaven a blight fell upon the land in the vicinity of the
"bloody town" of Boston, so that no wheat would grow there; and he
takes his stand, as it were, among the graves of the ancient
persecutors, and triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook
them in old age or at the parting-hour. He tells us that they died
suddenly and violently and in madness, but nothing can exceed the
bitter mockery with which he records the loathsome disease and "death
by rottenness" of the fierce and cruel governor.
*
    On the evening of the autumn day that had witnessed the martyrdom of
two men of the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was returning from
the metropolis to the neighboring country-town in which he resided.
The air was cool, the sky clear, and the lingering twilight was made
brighter by the rays of a young moon which had now nearly reached the
verge of the horizon. The traveller, a man of middle age, wrapped in a
gray frieze cloak, quickened his pace when he had reached the
outskirts of the town, for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay
between him and his home. The low straw-thatched houses were scattered
at considerable intervals along the road, and, the country having been
settled but about thirty years, the tracts of original forest still
bore no small proportion to the cultivated ground. The autumn wind
wandered among the branches, whirling away the leaves from all except
the pine trees and moaning as if it lamented the desolation of which
it was the instrument. The road had penetrated the mass of woods that
lay nearest to the town, and was just emerging into an open space,
when the traveller's ears were saluted by a sound more mournful than
even that of the wind. It was like the wailing of some one in
distress, and it seemed to proceed from beneath a tall and lonely fir
tree in the centre of a cleared