OLD SALEM TOWN 151 



what he was. Its grewsome mystery seems to 

 brood in all he wrote, and one cannot visit his 

 haunts and the scenes of its terror to-day without 

 feeling some atmosphere of it still hovering over 

 the place. Hawthorne's ancestor sat in judgment 

 over the witches, and Judge Hathorne, invisible 

 indeed but grimly onlooking, seems to me to pre- 

 side over many a tale which he wrote. As relent- 

 less fate mocked the witches while it gripped them 

 and killed them with trivialities, so it does the 

 characters in Hawthorne's stories, nor in the 

 progress of events is there room in the tale, in 

 the one case or the other, for the saving 

 grace of humor. From Hathorne to Hawthorne 

 came the somber impress of the days of witch 

 finding. 



The spring sun and the spring rain fall alike 

 gently on Gallows Hill, yet it stands bare and 

 wind-swept to-day as it did when the witches met 

 their fate there, as it has stood since the glaciers 

 ground over it, no one knows how many hundred 

 thousand years ago. The tough rock of which it 

 was built shows everywhere the traces of the fires 

 which melted and reset it in its present form, its 



