after, of the terms of the transaction. When the success of the enterprise was fully secured, Nurse conveyed to his children the larger half of the farm, reserving the homestead and a convenient amount of land in his own possession. The plan of this division shows great fairness and judgment, and was entirely satisfactory to them all. They were required, by the deeds he gave them, to maintain a roadway by which they could communicate with each other and with the old parental home. Here the venerable couple were living in truly patriarchal style, occupying the "mansion" of Townsend Bishop, when the witchcraft delusion occurred. They and their children were all clustered within the limits of the three-hundred-acre farm. They were one family. The territory was their own, secured by their united action, and made commodious, productive, valuable, and beautiful to behold, by their harmonious, patient, and persevering labor. Each family had a homestead, and fields and gardens; and children were growing up in every household. The elder sons and sons-in-law had become men of influence in the affairs of the church and village. It was a scene of domestic happiness and prosperity rarely surpassed. The work of life having been successfully done, it seemed that a peaceful and serene descent into the vale of years was[i.83] secured to Francis and Rebecca Nurse. But far otherwise was the allotment of a dark and inscrutable providence. There is some reason to suspect that the prosperity of the Nurses had awakened envy and jealousy among the neighbors. The very fact that they were a community of themselves and by themselves, may have operated prejudicially. To have a man, who, for forty years, had been known, in the immediate vicinity, as a farmer and mechanic on a small scale, without any pecuniary means, get possession of such a property, and spread out his family to such an extent, was inexplicable to all, and not relished perhaps by some. There seems to have been a disposition to persist in withholding from him the dignity of a landholder; and, long after he had distributed his estate among his descendants, it is mentioned in deeds made by parties that bounded upon it, as "the farm which Mr. Allen, of Boston, lets to the Nurses." Not knowing probably any thing about it, they call it, even after Nurse's death, "Mr. Allen's farm." This, however, was a slight matter. When Allen sold the farm to Nurse, he bound himself to defend the title; and he was true to his bond. What was required to be done in this direction may, perhaps, have exposed the Nurses to animosities which afterwards took terrible effect against them.