----The last of 'em,--he said,--the last of 'em all,--thank God! And the grave he lies in will look just as well as if he had been straight. Dig it deep, old Martin, dig it deep,--and let it be as long as other folks' graves. And mind you get the sods flat, old man,--flat as ever a straight-backed young fellow was laid under. And then, with a good tall slab at the head, and a footstone six foot away from it, it'll look just as if there was a man underneath. A man! Who said he was a man? No more men of that pattern to bear _his_ name!--Used to be a good-looking set enough.--Where's all the manhood and womanhood gone to since his great-grand-father was the strongest man that sailed out of the town of Boston, and poor Leah there the handsomest woman in Essex, if she was a witch? ----Give me some light,--he said,--more light,--I want to see the picture. He had started either from a dream or a wandering reverie. I was not unwilling to have more light in the apartment, and presently had lighted an astral lamp that stood on a table.--He pointed to a portrait hanging against the wall.--Look at her,--he said,--look, at her! Wasn't that a pretty neck to slip a hangman's noose over? The portrait was of a young woman, something more than twenty years old, perhaps. There were few pictures of any merit painted in New England before the time of Smibert, and I am at a loss to know what artist--could have taken this half-length, which was evidently from life. It was somewhat stiff and flat, but the grace of the figure and the sweetness of the expression reminded me of the angels of the early Florentine painters. She must have been of some consideration, for she was dressed in paduasoy and lace with hanging sleeves, and the old carved frame showed how the picture had been prized by its former owners. A proud eye she had, with all her sweetness.--I think it was that which hanged her, as his strong arm hanged Minister George Burroughs;--but it may have been a little mole on one cheek, which the artist had just hinted as a beauty rather than a deformity. You know, I suppose, that nursling imps addict themselves, after the fashion of young opossums, to these little excrescences. "Witch-marks" were good evidence that a young woman was one of the Devil's wet-nurses;--I should like to have seen you make fun of them in those days!--Then she had a brooch in her bodice, that might have been taken for some devilish amulet or other; and she wore a ring upon one of her fingers, with a red stone in it, that flamed as if the painter had dipped his pencil in fire;--who knows but that it was given her by a midnight suitor fresh from that fierce element, and licensed for a season to leave his couch of flame to tempt the unsanctified hearts of earthly maidens and brand their cheeks with the print of his scorching kisses?