The sublimity of all these things hushed them into silence, and if they heard a noise in the forest, a howl or a war-whoop, they would creep in among the flowers of some solitary thicket, and were safe. Directly the danger had passed they might be found where the scarlet barberries glittered among the sharp green leaves, like threaded bunches of coral; where the glowing purple plums, or clustered bunch berries rustled among the foliage and rolled about their feet in over ripeness. Into these wild places they delighted to go, even while they were afraid to speak above a whisper, and kept close hold of each other's hands every step of the way, till a sort of fascination crept over them, and they grew strangely in love with the vast solitude of the woods. Such was the love, and such the companionship of these two girls. In school or out, all day and all night, sleeping, waking, talking or dreaming, they were always together--never apart for a single day, up to the time of our story. The two sisters who had been carried together out of the minister's dwelling, and laid side by side behind that old meeting-house, whose slender wooden spire could be seen from the school-house window, with the figure of Death on the top for a weathercock, were scarcely more inseparable than these children had been, since their hands were linked in sisterhood by those new-made graves. And now Abigail Williams was approaching her nineteenth birthday; but she looked at least five years older than the sweet, blue-eyed Elizabeth. She was stately beyond her age, and altogether her beauty was so remarkable that the people of the town could not choose but turn and look upon it as she passed by on her way to school or meeting. But she had left off school now and took to reading every thing she could lay her hands on, even to the pamphlets and old newspapers hoarded away in the minister's garret; indeed her attainments were something wonderful--she was almost as learned as the minister himself. Such was Abby Williams, at the period when our story commenced. For the first time in her life, she was separated from Elizabeth Parris; then, while the loneliness was upon her, she was left in solitude, with no human creature in the house but the old Indian servant Tituba.