OLD SALEM TOWN 153 



Spot on the bare, red-gray summit where the irons 

 that once helped support the gibbet rust, still firmly 

 bedded in their holes in the rock. Over the ledges 

 and down the hill to the southeast lies a little pond 

 of sweet water that sparkles in the spring winds, 

 cosily sheltered in the hollow and surrounded by 

 the vivid green of smooth turf. But even this the 

 long scorn of summer heat dries to a brown bog 

 where sedges fight for the life remaining in the 

 stagnant pool in its center. About this pond the 

 barberry bushes have found a foothold in strag- 

 gling clumps to bear little crosses of witch-pin 

 thorns, and steeples of hard-hack blooms spire 

 solemnly near it in summer. Potentilla and cud- 

 weed dare the slope toward the summit of Gallows 

 Hill when the rain and sun are kind, and f ragaria 

 and violets and bulbous buttercup trail after, but 

 even in the soft days of May the height where the 

 witches were hung is desolate and forbidding. 

 Yet it dominates the outlook upon the town as the 

 story of the witchcraft delusion dominates the 

 annals of it, as both will for all time. 



Yet, for all its bareness, the country about Gal- 

 lows Hill has its golden days. These come in late 



