Softly the daylight faded in Deliverance’s prison-cell. But the purple twilight which brought repose after the day’s work, and long hours of sweet sleep to the tired world, came sorrowfully to her anxious heart. Slowly, as the golden light which had filtered through the leaves of the apple tree was withdrawn, so moment by moment, hope vanished, and despair, like a pall of darkness, settled upon her.
The long day of patient waiting was past. No longer might her straining ears listen for Abigail’s voice, for the tramp of horses’ feet coming to her rescue from Boston Town, or, joy of joys, Ronald, Ronald, to clasp her in his arms and defy any to touch her harmfully.
All that day, at every step in the corridor, she had started and quivered, waiting with nerves strung to the highest tension. Now she knew the sun had set upon Abigail’s failure.
The little maid had departed the morning of the previous day, and had she met with success, would have reached Boston Town in the evening, and have returned the next day to Salem.
Perhaps she had not been able to find the Cavalier, or had not found him soon enough and would arrive too late, or—and at this last thought, she shuddered—who could tell but that Abigail had mistaken her way and fallen a victim to the Indians or wolves, or a witch had cast a malignant spell upon her and she was wasting away in the forest, with none to know of her dire distress and to succour her. “Oh, Abigail,” she whispered, “I wish ye had not gone! I should have kenned better, for I be older than ye. Oh, Abigail! I shall be hanged and not ken whether good or evil happed to ye. I was fair selfish to send ye.”
With full and penitent heart, she prayed that, although the Lord in His wisdom suffered her to die, yet he would, out of his great mercy, send her a sign that her sins had been forgiven, and her selfishness had not brought harm to Abigail.
Having thus prayed, she rose from her knees and sat down on the straw bed. The minutes passed. She heard the jailer open her door and put her supper on the floor, but she paid no heed to him. Time dragged by, and her cell was filled with gloom. The leaves at the window, however, were still brightly green in the outside light.
Yet God had sent no sign to her. She folded her hands patiently in her lap. “It will come,” she murmured, with trustful eyes uplifted, “it will come.”
In Prison Lane she heard a mad barking of dogs and the shouting of boys, directly under her window. The excited clamour died away in a few moments. Suddenly her attention was aroused by a plaintive crying. She glanced up. Looking at her through the bars on the outside window-ledge, was a limp, bedraggled and forlorn kitten with a torn ear. It had climbed the apple tree to be rid of its merciless pursuers.
Deliverance jumped to her feet and stretched forth her arms with a cry of joy.
“Oh, Thomas, Thomas, the Lord hath sent ye as a sign to comfort me!”
The kitten mewed sympathetically. It made its way in through the bars to the inner ledge. Then it thrust a shrinking paw downwards, but hastily drew it back. Deliverance was puzzled to know how to reach the little creature.
She held up her petticoat like a basket and coaxed the kitten to jump, but without effect. Then she made a shelf of her hands, held high as possible, while she stood on tip-toes. But the shaking hands offered no safety to the shrinking kitten.
Yet the tender, beseeching tones of his little mistress won at last upon the cowardly soul of Thomas and fired him to dare all. He made an unexpected flying leap, landing on the golden head as the securest foothold. There he slipped and scrambled valiantly, until two eager hands lifted him down and the beloved little voice, broken with sobs, cried, “Oh, Thomas, my own dear Thomas, the Lord has sent ye as a sign to comfort me!”
Thus Thomas, a starved, runaway kitten, worn to a shadow, chased by dogs, ready to die of exhaustion, came into his own again.
Deliverance learned a lesson that evening which all must learn, sooner or later, that the crust thankfully shared with another, makes even prison-fare sweeter and more satisfying than plenty served in luxury and loneliness.
The corn mush and milk, which at times she had refused with a disdainful toss of her little head, now became a delicious dish with a rare savour, such as she had never before perceived. For while she ate from one side of the bowl with a spoon, Thomas, on the opposite side, drank the milk with incessant lapping of his small pink tongue, until in his eagerness to drain it, he thrust his two front feet in the bowl.
“Thomas, ye unmannerly person,” cried Deliverance, “what would ye think o’ me to be putting my two feet in the bowl?” And she lifted him up and went back to her straw bed, while Thomas, loudly purring, curled up in slumber in her lap.
The cell had now grown so dark that a flash of orange-light showing in the crack beneath the door, startled her, reminding her that the jailer was making his nightly rounds. Alarmed lest the kitten should be discovered, she pushed it under the straw. She was none too soon, for in another moment the door was flung open and revealed the jailer with his lantern, which made a circle of yellow light around him and showed the feet of another person following.
This personage was none other than Sir Jonathan Jamieson. The light shone on the tip of his long nose, his ruddy beard, the white ruff above his sable cape. As he was about to cross the threshold, he started and drew back. The jailer also started and his knees knocked together.
“Methought I heard a strange noise,” said Sir Jonathan with dignity. “I will investigate.”
The jailer clutched his cape. “My lord, my lord, meddle with no witch, lest ye tempt the Devil.”
Again they heard the strange sound. The lantern’s circle of light fell half-way across the floor of the cell. Beyond, and concealed by the shadow, Deliverance, terror-stricken, held the outraged Thomas firmly under the straw.
“It sounds like a cat,” quaked the jailer, and he straightway forgot all his previous doubts as to the guilt of the prisoner. “The witch be turning herself into an imp o’ Satan.”
While Sir Jonathan still hesitated, there came a long-drawn-out, blood-curdling cry. Bravely, he raised his walking-stick and tapped stoutly on the floor. “Scat!” he cried in a voice that shook slightly, “scat!”
“Miow,” answered the angry Thomas.
Shudderingly, the jailer reached in past Sir Jonathan, pulled the door to and locked it. Then, grown too weak to hold the lantern, he set it on the floor, and leant against the wall, his knees knocking together even more violently than before. “Oh, miserable doubter that I ha’ been!” he chattered, “’t be a judgment come upon me.”
Sir Jonathan leant against the wall on the opposite side of the corridor, with his knees shaking also. “Since it troubles you, goodman,” he said, “I shall not persist in entering, although I cling to the opinion that when one is sufficient exalted in spiritual things, the Devil has no power over him.”
“I ha’ been a miserable doubter,” chattered the jailer; “the Lord ha’ mercy on my soul!”
From the cell came again that terrible cry, a wailing, mournful sound, so wild and eerie as to strike terror to stouter hearts.
“The witch be calling on her Master, Satan,” chattered the jailer.
“Ay, pray,” muttered Sir Jonathan; “you must have an ill conscience, goodman, to be so afeared. But let me haste away; the time waxes apace and the night watchman will be making his rounds.”
Perhaps it was part of his punishment that from that hour Sir Jonathan was never free from dread. He, who originally had no faith in witchcraft and secretly laughed at it, although he falsely testified to his belief in it, was doomed, henceforth, to start at his own shadow, to cower in bed, to ever after keep a night-light burning. He hurried along in the silver moonlight which fell whitely on the pebbled street, a solitary black figure with flapping cape and steeple-hat.
Suddenly, he drew back with a shrill cry, startled by his own shadow flung ahead of him as he turned a corner. So, cowering and starting, he reached his room and crept into his bed, there to fall into an uneasy slumber, which the taper’s pale flame was as ineffectual to calm as the light of truth to reach his darkened heart.
Meanwhile, an indignant kitten stood gasping and sneezing, nearly choked by the straw under which it had lain.
Ah! how its little mistress held it to her breast and soothed it and kissed it, weeping for thanksgiving that she had been spared a visit from Sir Jonathan. There were hours, however, in the long unhappy night, when not even the kitten nestled in her arms could comfort Deliverance,—hours when all the bright days of her life came trooping through her fancy, to be realized no more.
Never again would she be filled with joy that the fruit trees blew sweet in blossom, that the violets budded in the long grass in the orchard, that she and Abigail had found a bird’s nest holding four blue eggs, or had happened upon a patch of strawberries. There were other times which would not return,—the moonlit winter nights, fairer than the days, when she and Goodwife Higgins went to husking-bees and quilting parties. Not for her would there be a red ear found amidst the corn. Still sadder were her thoughts of her father, missing her help with the herbs, blundering in his helpless fashion over the task that had once been hers.
Goodwife Higgins would have no one left now to mind her of the little daughter that had died so long ago of the smallpox.
And there was one other whom she had not seen for many months.
“Oh, Ronald!” she whispered, “my heart be full o’ grief that ye could not come to me.”
After a weary while she fell into a deep sleep from which she was wakened by the jailer.
For the first time he spoke to her harshly, roughly bidding her rise and prepare for death. He pushed the bowl containing her breakfast inside the threshold with his foot, fearing to enter the cell. So hurried was his glance that it failed to take in Thomas, snuggled up warmly in the depression in the straw, made where Deliverance had slept.
Sadly the little maid dressed herself and braided her hair.
She ate a little of the mush and milk, but she fed most of it to Thomas.
“Thomas,” she said, tipping the bowl conveniently for him, “my own dear Thomas, I hope ye will not forget me. Ye can go home again, Thomas, but I shall never see my home again.”
After this she rose and put the cell in order, making the straw bed over nicely. Then she wrote a note on a leaf torn from Abigail’s diary, and pinned this note by a knitting-needle on the stocking she had completed. Having finished, she sat down and waited patiently. It was not long before the jailer again appeared. She saw behind him the portly Beadle.
“How now, witch,” cried the latter, peering in over the old man’s shoulder, “hath prison-fare fattened ye?” But as he caught sight of the prisoner he started. “I’ faith,” he cried, “how peaked ye be. Go in, goody, and fetch her forth,” he commanded the jailer.
“Na step will I take toward the witch,” chattered the jailer.
“Step in, step in, goody,” advised the Beadle; “how can I convey the witch away unless ye free her?”
But the jailer was not to be persuaded to go near the prisoner. He and the Beadle fell into an angry controversy over the matter and were near to serious quarrelling, when a soldier appeared at the doorway.
“What causeth the delay?” cried the guard, crossly. “Hath the witch flown out of the window?”
“They be feared lest I cast a spell on them and so dare not unlock my chain,” spoke Deliverance, “but I wot not how to cast a spell and I would, good sir.”
“Give me the keys,” said the guard, brusquely. He snatched them in no gentle manner from the jailer. “Enough, enough of this foolishness, ye chicken-hearted knaves. Stand up, mistress,” he added, entering the cell.
He knelt in front of the little maid, fumbling to find the right key of the bunch. Deliverance, suddenly grown faint, rested one hand on his shoulder. He started and his heart leapt for fear, but the continued touch of the small, trembling hand, so weak and helpless, changed his fear to pity. So he said naught, but was willing the witch-maid should lean on his strong shoulder. He unlocked the padlock and flung the chain aside. Deliverance stood unbound once more.
She turned and lifted the stocking with the note pinned on it, from the floor.
“Oh! would ye mind,” said she, “to bear this to my father for me?”
The soldier, with a gruff assent, put the stocking and note in his pocket. He turned away, no longer caring to look into those blue, beseeching eyes, which filled him with tormenting misgivings.
“Come, come,” he cried to the Beadle, “it waxeth past time. Let an ill duty be done quickly, say I.” He strode out of the cell and down the corridor.
The Beadle reached in and touched Deliverance’s shoulder with his staff of office. “Step forth,” he commanded, “and follow yon soldier, and I will come up behind.”
Suddenly the little maid bent down and lifted something from the straw pallet. As she turned they saw she held a little black kitten, curled in slumber, against her breast.
The old jailer shuddered and muttered a prayer, and the Beadle’s fat face grew white. They believed that she, after the manner of witches, had summoned an imp from Hell to bear her company.
Close to the prison door was drawn a rude cart, with a stool fastened to the floor in the back. The driver, indifferent through much similar experience, sat nodding on the seat. The soldier who had preceded Deliverance, waited to assist her in the cart, which was too high a step for a little maid. He lifted her in bodily, kitten and all, keeping his eyes turned from her face.
The driver clucked to his horse, the soldier mounted his and rode ahead, and the Beadle walked pompously at the side of the cart, moving slowly down the street.
All Salem had gathered to behold this hanging, which was of awful import to the townspeople, brought to a frantic belief that Satan had taken possession of the heart of one of their children, known and loved by them all her life. A strange, sad thing it was that the Devil should have taken on himself the guise of a motherless young maiden.
So although the crowd through which the cart passed was large, but little noisy demonstration was made, and few curses or mutterings heard. Several boys who ventured to call jeeringly, were sternly hushed. In the throng there was only one near friend to the prisoner. This was Goodwife Higgins, who plodded bare-headed beside the cart, weeping. Neither her father nor brother was to be seen. All night following the trial, Master Wentworth had wandered in the fields in a drenching rain, and had returned home to succumb to an illness, from which he daily grew weaker, lying unconscious this very morning.
Many of the women were affected to tears by the sight of the little maid, seated on the stool in the cart, the kitten clasped to her breast.
Deliverance knew naught of this sympathy. She had but a dull sense of many people, and that the sun had never shone so brightly before. She was dazed by terror and grief, and a stupor crept over her, so that her head hung heavily on her breast and her limbs seemed cold and of leaden weight.
The cart passed out of the street into a rocky path, and ascended by imperceptible degrees to the summit of a low, green hill.
The little maid lifted her head and looked steadfastly at the scaffold there erected. On the platform she saw the figures of the minister and the hangman, dark against the blue sky.