Old Tuggie listened to the light footsteps and the dragging noise in agony. With close-shut eyes she listened to the steps of the devils and moonacks as they gradually went away from the house. The cold, icy night-air blew in upon her as she lay on the floor, the water burned down in the pot, and a nauseous odor of burning fish and flesh filled the house. At last she tremblingly arose, closed the door, swung the pot off the fire, seized a horseshoe and prayer-book, and went to bed. The week previous Pel Noyes had been to Boston, and had returned with his brain and tongue full of a fine sled for coasting that he had seen in that great metropolis. With four old sleigh-runners and a few boards he had rigged an imitation of the beautiful “double-runner,” and the four boys sallied out that winter night to use and enjoy it. They intended to skim past Witch Tuggie’s door with a shrill and annoying shriek of defiance, but alas! their clumsy steering-apparatus broke when they were half-way down the hill, and the contrary sled, rudderless and uncontrolled, instead of gliding past the witch’s door banged into it, with the full success that we know. The boys were thrown into the snow outside the door, and their first impulse was to abandon their newly manufactured sled and run for their lives; but they were quick to discover, from manner and word, that Tuggie was more frightened than they were, and they stole in softly and rescued the sled out of the very witch’s den. A BLACK POLITICIAN On a bright June morning in the year 1811, old Cuddymonk sat in the cheerful sunlight at the open door of his house, on the banks of Lake Petaquamscut, in old Narragansett. Cuddymonk was a negro; but a Narragansett negro was, at that date, of almost another race than a Southern negro. He was free; he was usually respected and self-respecting; he might, and often did, own a house and farm of his own; and he had a certain independent social position which was far from being a despised one, for he enjoyed, with his rich white neighbors, who had been slave-owners, a friendly intimacy that was denied to a poor white man. He was, however, somewhat lazy, occasionally untruthful, and even dishonest--like his Southern colored brother. Cuddymonk was a typical Narragansett negro--sharp, shrewd, and in the main thrifty. He was deeply and consistently superstitious, and knew a thousand tales of ghosts and spirits and witches and Manitous, old traditions of African Voodooism and Indian pow-wows. He was profoundly learned in the meaning of dreams and omens and predictions, and he did not hesitate to practise--or attempt to practise--all kinds of witch-charms and “conjures” and “projects,” though he was a member in good standing, as he proudly stated, of “de Pistikle Church.”