She went in, satisfied that the noise had come from a passing bird, but the minute the wooden latch fell from her hand closing the door, the cry, hoarser and louder, ran through the house again. Then Tituba began to be afraid. She had heard of witchcraft, and believed in it, like her master, and all the wise men of the colony. From that hour she never heard a hoof upon the turf, though it were only that of a young fawn, or the hoot of an owl in the woods, that she did not remember what she solemnly believed to be the witch-gathering in her master's study, and tremble in her chimney corner till it had passed away. After this time, William Phipps went forth to work out his ambitious purposes, and Samuel Parris fell back into the quiet of his home, a little troubled at times, and feeling the need of extra fasting and prayer, but the same thoughtful, studious Christian that he had always been. But all at once, when he was on the very verge of old age, when the most intense affections of common men soften into pleasant habits, this man, of mature years, awoke from the lethargy of a life-time, and took to his bosom a fair young girl of his church, an orphan, who had been cast upon its charity, and, as it were, led by heaven into his household. It was a sudden act, prompted by the buried romance which had so long slept within him, sure to find utterance at some period of his life, either through the intellect or the affections. For a time he was very happy and forgot every thing, even heaven itself, in the company of his beautiful young wife, who loved him with that deep, unselfish love, which partook somewhat of veneration, but more of child-like gratitude. But soon the old man grew afraid of himself, afraid of the love which centred entirely around that young creature, bringing her like an unbidden angel between his very prayers and the throne of grace. Thus his life was spent between fits of wild devotion and paroxysms of remorse, lest he had become an idolater. Time passed; it was more than twice twelve months before the man of dreams and the man of action met again. The one was absorbed by his ambition, the other had become selfish in his love: save on that one subject he had no sympathy to give. But as time glided away, leaving the hair on his temples whiter and whiter, the old man was seized with an unaccountable dread. When his young wife in all the bloom of her goodness and beauty had made him the father of a daughter, her living shadow, vague, dark apprehension seized upon him, and weeks before that young mother sickened and died, the blackness of a great sorrow overshadowed his soul. He stood by her grave and saw the fresh earth heaped upon it, and, shaking his venerable white head, when his friends would have consoled him, went away into the desolation of his old age, a broken-hearted man, weary of life, and yet afraid to die.