None of these sons of Samuel, the mate of Cromwell, were great men themselves, but were notable in their descendants. Samuel's descendant came to represent a historical family; Anthony's greatest descendant invented the telegraph; and the descendants of Robert were noble Southrons. William alone of the five brothers had notoriety. Samuel, Jr., was more eminent, but William made a mark in Massachusetts' history. Settling in the town of Newbury, William Morse led an humble and monotonous life. When he had lived there more than forty years, and had come to be an old and infirm man, he was made to figure unhappily in the first legal investigation of New England witchcraft. This was in 1679-81, or more than ten years before the Salem witchcraft, and it constitutes a page of hitherto unpublished Massachusetts history. Mr. and Mrs. Morse resided in a plain, wooden house that still stands at the head of Market Street, in what is now Newburyport. William had been a farmer, but his sons had now taken the homestead, and he was supporting himself and wife by shoe-making. His age was almost three-score-years-and-ten, and he was a reputably worthy man, then just in the early years of his dotage. His wife, the "goody Elizabeth," was a Newbury woman, and apparently some few years her husband's senior. I can easily imagine the worthy couple there in the old square room of a winter's night. On one side of the fire-place sits the old man in his hard arm-chair, his hands folded, and his spectacles awry, as he sonorously snores away the time. Opposite him sits the old lady, a little, toothless dame, with angular features half hidden in a stiffly starched white cap, her fingers flying over her knitting-work, as precisely and perseveringly she "seams," "narrows," and "widens." At the old lady's right hand stands a cherry table, on which burns a yellow tallow candle that occasionally the dame proceeds to snuff. There is no carpet on the floor, and the furniture is poor and plain. A kitchen chair sits at the other side of the table, and in, or _on_ it, sits a half-grown boy, a ruddy, freckled, country boy who wants to whistle, and prefers to go out and play, but who is required to stay in the house, to sit still, and to read from out the leather-covered Bible that lies open on the table before him. "But I would like to go out and slide down hill!" begs the boy. "Have you read yer ten chapters yit?" asks the old dame. "N-no!" "Wal; read on." And the lad obeys. He is reading aloud; he is not a good reader; the chapters are in Deuteronomy; but that stint must be performed before evening; then ten chapters after six o'clock, and at eight he must go to bed. If he moves uneasily in his chair, or stops to breathe, he is reprimanded. The boy was the grandson of the old couple, and resided with them. Under just such restrictions he was kept. Bright, quick, and full of boy life, he was restless under the enforced restraint.