A few hours before the time set for execution, young Orcutt sailed into the harbor, and before daybreak he was at the house. Here he learned for the first time the awful calamity which had befallen his sweetheart in his absence. At 7 o'clock he was allowed to enter the jail, with the convicted girl's sister. At the prison door they were informed that the wicked girl had died during the night. Knowing that there was no hope under any circumstances of the sentence being remitted, the bereaved ones regarded the news as good, and although they broke down with grief at the shipwreck of their lives, they both realized that, to use the devout words of the victim's sister, "The Lord had delivered her from the hands of her enemies." The record of brutality in connection with the witch agitation might be continued almost without limit, for the number of victims was very great. Visitors to Danvers to-day are often shown by local guides where some of the tragedies of the persecution were committed. The superstition was finally driven away by educational enlightenment, and it seems astounding that it lasted as long as it did. Two hundred years have nearly elapsed since the craze died out, and it is but charitable to admit, that although many of the witnesses must have been corrupt and perjured, the majority of those connected with the cases were thoroughly in earnest, and that although they rejoiced at the undoing of the ungodly, they regretted very much being made the instruments of that undoing. CHAPTER III. IN PICTURESQUE NEW YORK. Some Local Errors Corrected--A Trip Down the Hudson River--The Last of the Mohicans--The Home of Rip Van Winkle--The Ladies of Vassar and their Home--West Point and its History--Sing Sing Prison--The Falls of Niagara--Indians in New York State. Residents in the older States of the East are frequently twitted with their ignorance concerning the newer States of the West, and of the habits and customs of those who, having taken Horace Greeley's advice at various times, turned their faces toward the setting sun, determined to take advantage of the fertility of the soil, and grow up with the country of which they knew but little. It needs but a few days' sojourn in an Eastern city by a Western man to realize how sublimely ignorant the New Englander is concerning at least three-fourths of his native land. The writer was, on a recent occasion, asked, in an Eastern city, how he managed to get along without any of the comforts of civilization, and whether he did not find it necessary to order all of his clothing and comforts by mail from the East. When he replied that in the larger cities, at any rate, of the West, there were retail emporiums fully up to date in all matters of fashion and improvement, and caterers who could supply the latest delicacies in season at reasonable prices, an incredulous smile was the result, and regret was expressed that local prejudice and pride should so blind a man to the actual truth.