an English female passenger.  The women who belonged to the place heard her dying outcries, as they rose through the midnight air, and reverberated far and wide along the silent shores.  She was heard to exclaim, “O mercy, mercy!  Lord Jesus Christ, save me!  Lord Jesus Christ, save me!” Her body was buried by the pirates on the spot.  The same piercing voice is believed to be heard at intervals, more or less often, almost every year, in the stillness of a calm starlight or clear moonlight night.  There is something, it is said, so wild, mysterious, and evidently superhuman in the sound, as to strike a chill of dread into the hearts of all who listen to it.  The writer of an article on this subject, in the “Marblehead Register” of April 3, 1830, declares, that “there are not wanting, at the present day, persons of unimpeachable veracity and known respectability, who still continue firmly to believe the tradition, and to assert that they themselves have been auditors of the sounds described, which they declare were of such an unearthly nature as to preclude the idea of imposition or deception.”

When “the silver moon unclouded holds her way,” or when the stars are glistening in the clear, cold sky, and the dark forms of the moored vessels are at rest upon the sleeping bosom of the harbor; when no natural sound comes forth from the animate or inanimate creation but the dull and melancholy rote of the sea along the rocky and winding coast,—­how often is the watcher startled from the reveries of an excited imagination by the piteous, dismal, and terrific screams of the unlaid ghost of the murdered lady!

A negro died, fifty years ago, in that part of Danvers called originally Salem Village, at a very advanced age.  He was supposed to have reached his hundredth year.  He never could be prevailed upon to admit that there was any delusion or mistake in the proceedings of 1692.  To him, the whole affair was easy of explanation.  He believed that the witchcraft was occasioned by the circumstance of the Devil’s having purloined the church-book, and that it subsided so soon as the book was recovered from his grasp.  Perhaps the particular hypothesis of the venerable African was peculiar to himself; but those persons must have a slight acquaintance with the history of opinions in this and every other country, who are not aware that the superstition on which it was founded has been extensively entertained by men of every color, almost, if not quite, up to the present day.  If the doctrines of demonology have been completely overthrown and exterminated in our villages and cities, it is a very recent achievement; nay, I fear that in many places the auspicious event remains to take place.