ready to make her escape, as soon as she
had cursed the witch, who would not, or
could not, undo the evil she had wrought.
Grace lifted up her right hand, and held it up
on high, as she doomed Lois to be accursed for
ever, for her deadly sin, and her want of mercy
even at this final hour. And, lastly, she
summoned her to meet her at the judgment-seat, and
answer for this deadly injury done to both souls
and bodies of those who had taken her in, and
received her when she came to them an orphan
and a stranger.

Until this last summons, Lois had stood as
one who hears her sentence and can say nothing
against it, for she knows all would be in vain.
But she lifted her head when she heard her
aunt speak of the judgment-seat, and at the
end of Grace's speech she, too, lifted up her
right hand, as if solemnly pledging herself by
that action, and replied:

"Aunt! I will meet you there. And there
you will know my innocence of this deadly
thing. God have mercy on you and yours!"

Her calm voice maddened Grace, and making
a gesture as if she plucked up a handful of dust
off the floor, and threw it at Lois, she cried:

"Witch! witch! ask mercy for thyself—I
need not your prayers. Witches' prayers are
read backwards. I spit at thee, and defy thee!"
And so she went away.

Lois sat moaning all that night through.
"God comfort me! God strengthen me!" was
all she could remember to say. She just felt
that want, nothing more,—all other fears and
wants seemed dead within her. And when the
gaoler brought in her breakfast the next morning,
he reported her as "gone silly;" for, indeed,
she did not seem to know him, but kept rocking
herself to and fro, and whispering softly to
herself, smiling a little from time to time.

But God did comfort her, and strengthen her
too. Late on that Wednesday afternoon, they
thrust another "witch" into her cell, bidding
the two, with opprobrious words, keep company
together. The new comer fell prostrate with
the push given her from without; and Lois, not
recognising anything but an old ragged woman
lying helpless on her face on the ground, lifted
her up; and lo! it was Nattee—dirty, filthy
indeed, mud-pelted, stone-bruised, beaten, and
all astray in her wits with the treatment she
had received from the mob outside. Lois held
her in her arms, and softly wiped the old brown
wrinkled face with her apron, crying over it, as
she had hardly yet cried over her own sorrows.
For hours she tended the old Indian woman—
tended her bodily woes; and as the poor
scattered senses of the savage creature came
slowly back, Lois gathered her infinite dread of
the morrow, when she, too, as well as Lois, was
to be led out to die, in face of all that infuriated
crowd. Lois sought in her own mind for some
source of comfort for the old woman, who shook
like one in the shaking palsy at the dread of
death—and such a death.

When all was quiet through the prison in the
deep dead midnight, the gaoler outside the door
heard Lois telling, as if to a young child, the
marvellous and sorrowful story of one who died
on the cross for us and for our sakes. As long
as she spoke, the Indian woman's terror seemed
lulled; but the instant she paused, for weariness,
Nattee cried out afresh, as if some wild
beast were following her close through the
dense forests in which she had dwelt in her
youth. And then Lois went on, saying all the
blessed words she could remember, and comforting
the helpless Indian woman with the sense of
the presence of a Heavenly Friend. And in
comforting her, Lois was comforted; in strengthening
her, Lois was strengthened.

The morning came, and the summons to come
forth and die came. They who entered the cell
found Lois asleep, her face resting on the
slumbering old woman, whose head she still
held in her lap. She did not seem clearly to
know where she was when she awakened; the
"silly" look had returned to her wan face; all
she seemed to know was that somehow or
another, through some peril or another, she had
to protect the poor Indian woman. She smiled
faintly when she saw the bright light of the
April day; and put her arm round Nattee, and
tried to keep the Indian quiet with hushing,
soothing words of broken meaning, and holy
fragments of the Psalms. Nattee tightened her
hold upon Lois as they drew near the gallows,
and the outrageous crowd below began to hoot
and yell. Lois redoubled her efforts to calm
and encourage Nattee, seemingly unconscious
that any of the opprobrium, the hootings, the
stones, the mud, was directed towards her
herself. But when they took Nattee from her
arms, and led her out to suffer first, Lois seemed
all at once to recover her sense of the present
terror. She gazed wildly around, stretched out
her arms as if to some person in the distance,
who was yet visible to her, and cried out once
with a voice that thrilled through all who heard
it, "Mother!" Directly afterwards the body of
Lois the Witch swung in the air, and every one
stood, with hushed breath, with a sudden wonder,
like a fear of deadly crime, fallen upon them.

The stillness and the silence were broken by
one crazed and mad, who came rushing up the
steps of the ladder, and caught Lois's body in
his arms, and kissed her lips with wild passion.
And then, as if it were true what the people
believed, that he was possessed by a demon, he
sprang down, and rushed through the crowd,
out of the bounds of the city, and into the dark
dense forest, and Manasseh Hickson was no
more seen of Christian man.

The people of Salem had awakened from
their frightful delusion before the autumn, when
Captain Holdernesse and Ralph Lucy came to
find out Lois, and bring her home to peaceful
Barford, in the pleasant country of England.
Instead, they led them to the grassy grave where
she lay at rest, done to death by mistaken
men. Ralph Lucy shook the dust off his feet in
quitting Salem, with a heavy, heavy heart; and
lived a bachelor all his life-long for her sake.

Long years afterwards Captain Holdernesse