Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from the midnight wood they came,

Thrice around the block-house marching, met unharmed its volleyed flame.

Then with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in earth or lost in air, All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moonlit sands lay bare.

Midnight came; from out the forest moved a dusky mass, that

soon

Grew to warriors plumed and painted, grimly marching in the

moon.

'Ghosts of witches,' said the captain, 'thus I foil the Evil One!' And he rammed a silver button from his doublet down his gun.

Once again the spectral horror moved the guarded wall about; Once again the levelled muskets through the palisades flashed out, With that deadly aim the squirrel on his tree-top might not shun, Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his slant wing to the sun.

Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless shower of lead. With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the phantoms fled; Once again without a shadow on the sands the moonlight lay, And the white smoke curling through it drifted slowly down the bay!

'God preserve us!' said the captain, 'never mortal foes were

there;

They have vanished with their leader, Prince and Power of the air!

Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess naught avail; They who do the Devil's service wear their master's coat-of-mail!'

So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again a warning call Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round the dusky hall: And they looked to flint and priming, and they longed for break of day;

But the captain closed his Bible: 'Let us cease from man, and pray!'

To the men who went before us all the unseen powers seemed near,

And their steadfast strength and courage struck its roots in holy fear.

Every hand forsook the musket, every head was bowed and bare, Every stout knee pressed the flagstones as the captain led in prayer.

Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres round the wall,

But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears and hearts of

Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish! Never after mortal man Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the block-house of Cape Ann."

Another Gloucester story of marvel, which from a later date (1745, the year of the expedition against Louisburg) has been repeated to the present time, is thus related by Mr. Babson:

"No account of the part borne by Gloucester in the expedition to Louisburg would be complete without the story of Peg Wesson. The popular belief in witchcraft had not then ceased, and Peg was reputed a witch. She lived in or near an old building on Back Street, called the Garrison; and there, just before the departure of the Gloucester soldiers for Cape Breton, she was visited by some of them, who, by their conduct towards her, aroused her indignation to such a pitch, that, on their departure, she threatened them with vengeance at Louisburg. While in camp there, these men had their attention arrested by the singular

movements of a crow that kept hovering near them. After many attempts had been made in the usual way to kill the bird, it occurred to one of them that it must be Peg Wesson; and, if so, that no baser metal than silver would bring her to the ground. He accordingly took his silver sleevebuttons from his wrist and discharged them at the bird, which fell wounded in the leg and was soon killed. Upon their return to Gloucester, they learned that, at the exact moment when the crow was killed, Peg Wesson fell down near the Garrison House with a broken leg; and that, when the fractured limb was examined, the identical sleevebuttons fired at the crow under the walls of Louisburg were found, and extracted from the wound! Such is the story of Peg Wesson. And, incredible as it may seem that it ever was received as truth, some now living can testify to the apparent belief in it with which it was related by many persons not more than fifty years ago."

Leaving the fine old town, and winding or zigzagging homeward on the Squam River side of the circuit, the river soon shows its mirror-like surface or its innumerable sparkling waves. Near the Green where once the Meeting-house of the old Town Parish stood is the ancient house, with rear roof descending lower than the front, which was built and occupied by the minister of the parish, Rev. John White, soon after his settlement, in 1702.

The road leads through Riverdale, near

ing the brook from Cape Pond which flows through a lovely meadow into Tide-Mill Pond, and thence into Mill River, an inlet from Squam River. Farmhouses and green fields please the eye. Conspicuous among the farms is the Pearce Farm, lying between the road and the brook and millpond. The frame of the smaller of the two barns near the house is that of the church which was erected for Rev. John Murray by the people to whom he ministered. The frame was taken from the old site at the harbor, corner of Spring and Water Streets, in 1805. Pole's Hill- a steep hill of stone, overlooking road, farm-houses, fields, meadow, and brook at its base, and a wide area of land, river, and sea around-is a sufficiently novel form among the thousands of ledges and cliffs on our granite promontory to tarry by and examine awhile. Proceeding from Pole's Hill across Tide-Mill Bridge, and then up from the valley through the village, passing a church, to an altitude at which most of the smaller branches as well as the main tides of Squam River are comprehended by the eye, one of the most charming prospects of the Cape is surveyed. The white caps of Ipswich Bay are nodding like the plumes of a mighty host in the northern distance. The hoar sand of Coffin's Beach, and the blue, green, and amber of Squam River, near its mouth, shimmer in the sun's burning rays. The village of Annisquam nestles on its narrow strip of earth

between Lobster Cove in front and the high steep ridge behind, screening it from the storms of the Bay. Approaching this cosey and quiet village, the eye turns southward, attracted by the splendor of the river, with its many coves and creeks; the glowing red of the crags, jutting from island and point; and the chocolate and emerald of reedy shore and grass-covered marsh. "All these coves

and inlets," as one not long since remarked, in a metropolitan sheet, "make the scenery bewildering in beauty; and the six-mile drive over the neck of the Cape, from Gloucester to General Butler's house, which stands on a lofty bluff where its every window commands a perfect sea-picture, is across a rocky road which lies so high, and with such a wilderness of meadows in every shade of vivid greens and rusty reds, interspersed with glittering arms of the sea, and still, silver lagoons of salt water, reflecting and repeating the sky, that one almost feels in a land of sorcery, travelling a road that hangs midway between earth and heaven." A little onward, and a tide-mill and the bridge crossing Goose Cove are passed. Still further, and the choice is presented to drive over the bridge spanning Lobster Cove to the village of Annisquam, or more directly toward home, on the pinebordered way, on the east side of this long, river-like inlet, to the church at its head. Near the church, the view down the Cove and across the river to the marsh, and then to the gray hills, and