Mather raised his voice in loud prayers, in which
he assumed the guilt of the accused girl, no one
listened, all were anxious to secure Lois, as if
they feared she would vanish from before their
very eyes; she, white, trembling, standing quite
still in the tight grasp of strange, fierce men,
her dilated eyes only wandering a little now and
then in search of some pitiful face—some pitiful
face that among all those hundreds was not to
be found. While some fetched cords to bind
her, and others, by low questions, suggested new
accusations to the distempered brain of
Prudence, Manasseh obtained a hearing once more.
Addressing Dr. Cotton Mather, he said, evidently
anxious to make clear some new argument that
had just suggested itself to him: "Sir, in this
matter, be she witch or not, the end has been
foreshown to me by the spirit of prophecy.
Now, reverend sir, if the event be known to the
spirit, it must have been foredoomed in the
councils of God. If so, why punish her for
doing that in which she had no free will?"

"Young man," said Dr. Mather, bending
down from the pulpit and looking very severely
upon Manasseh, "take care! you are trenching
on blasphemy."

"I do not care. I say it again. Either Lois
Barclay is a witch, or she is not. If she is, it
has been foredoomed for her, for I have seen a
vision of her death as a condemned witch for
many months past and the voice has told me
there was but one escape for her, Lois—the
voice you know—" In his excitement he
began to wander a little, but it was touching to
see how conscious he was that by giving way he
would lose the thread of the logical argument
by which he hoped to prove that Lois ought not
to be punished, and with what an effort he
wrenched his imagination, away from the old
ideas, and strove to concentrate all his mind
upon the plea that, if Lois was a witch, it had
been shown him by prophecy; and if there was
prophecy there must be foreknowledge; if fore-
knowledge, foredoom; if foredoom, no exercise
of free will, and, therefore, that Lois was not
justly amenable to punishment.

On he went, plunging into heresy, caring not—
growing more and more passionate every
instant, but directing his passion into keen
argument, desperate sarcasm, instead of allowing it
to excite his imagination. Even Dr. Mather
felt himself on the point of being worsted in the
very presence of this congregation, who, but a
short half-hour ago, looked upon him as all but
infallible. Keep a good heart, Cotton Mather!
your opponent's eye begins to glare and flicker
with a terrible yet uncertain light—his speech
grows less coherent, and his arguments are
mixed up with wild glimpses at wilder revelations
made to himself alone. He has touched
at the limits, he has entered the borders of
blasphemy, and with an awful cry of horror and
reprobation the congregation rise up, as if one
man, against the blasphemer. Dr. Mather
smiled a grim smile, and the people were ready
to stone Manasseh, who went on, regardless,
talking and raving.

"Stay, stay!" said Grace Hickson. (All the
decent family shame which prompted her to
conceal the mysterious misfortune of her only son
from public knowledge done away with by the
sense of the immediate danger to his life.) "Touch
him not. He knows not what he is saying.
The fit is upon him. I tell you the truth before
God. My son, my only son, is mad."

They stood aghast at the intelligence. The
grave young citizen who had silently taken his
part in life close by them in their daily lives—
not mixing much with them, it was true, but
looked up to, perhaps, all the more—the
student of abstruse books on theology fit to
converse with the most learned ministers that
ever came about those parts—was he the same
with the man now pouring out wild words to
Lois the witch, as if he and she were the only
two present. A solution of it all occurred to
them. He was another victim. Great was the
power of Satan! Through the arts of the devil
that white statue of a girl had mastered the
soul of Manasseh Hickson. So the word spread
from mouth to mouth. And Grace heard it.
It seemed a healing balsam for her shame.
With wilful, dishonest blindness she would not
see—not even in her secret heart would she
acknowledge that Manasseh had been strange,
and moody, and violent long before the English
girl had reached Salem. She even found some
specious reason for his attempt at suicide long
ago. He was recovering from a fever—and
though tolerably well in health, the delirium had
not finally left him. But since Lois came how
headstrong he had been at times! how
unreasonable! how moody! What a strange
delusion was that which he was under of being
bidden by some voice to many her! How he
followed her about, and clung to her, as under
some compulsion of affection! And over all
reigned the idea that, if he were indeed suffering
from being bewitched, he was not mad, and
might again assume the honourable position he
had held in the congregation and in the town,
when the spell by which he was held was
destroyed. So Grace yielded to the notion herself,
and encouraged it in others, that Lois
Barclay had bewitched both Manasseh and
Prudence. And the consequence of this belief
in those days was, that Lois was to be tried,
with little chance in her favour, to see whether
she was a witch or no; and if a witch, whether
she would confess, implicate others, repent, and
live a life of bitter shame, avoided by all men,
and cruelly treated by most; or die impenitent,
hardened, denying her crime upon the gallows.

And so they dragged Lois away from the
congregation of Christians to the gaol to await her
trial. I say "dragged her," because, although
she was docile enough to have followed them
whither they would, she was now so faint as to
require extraneous force—poor Lois! who
should have been carried and tended lovingly in
her state of exhaustion, but, instead, was so
detested by the multitude, who looked upon her
as an accomplice of Satan in all his evil doings,
that they cared no more how they treated her