CHAPTER XXII.
THE DEATH FIRE.
The house of Samuel Parris, the minister of the church of Salem, stood in a solitary place, a little out of the village, which lay between it and the sea, whose interminable beat could be heard throbbing like a pulse along the beach.
When every thing was still, and the hum of insects asleep in the forest, which, boundless as the blue ocean, stretched in an opposite direction, dark and teeming with mysterious shadows, the repose was almost appalling. Then, especially, the sweep of these waves, coming with distinctness to the minister's house, and blending with the shiver of the forest leaves, and the cry of such birds as sing to the darkness, rendered the night-time one of peculiar mournfulness in that out-of-the-way dwelling.
But the young girl who sat in the little family-room, late one quiet evening, had learned to love the dark hours, and so listened to the mighty and interminable throb of those waves with strange sympathy. The dull tick of an old oak clock, whose coffin-like frame was heavy with carvings, seemed answering the eternal anthem with its small noise, like a human voice striving to answer the hymns of universal nature; and the petty sound irritated her nerves, while the everlasting sweep, afar off, made her heart swell and her eye kindle.
As Abigail Williams sat thus restlessly listening, Tituba, the old Indian woman, came into the room, and sat down on the floor at her feet. The woman did not speak, but lifted her face, wrinkled like a dried plum, to that of the young girl, and waited to be addressed. The large, earnest eyes of Abby Williams looked down upon the Indian.
"It is late, Tituba," she said, "the clock has struck eleven, and no sign of his coming!"
"He will be here—Wahpee would have been home long ago, if any thing had kept the young chief away. Are you sleepy, Abigail?"
"Sleepy! no. I shall never be sleepy again. The knowledge of who I am, and what they are in whose bosom I have slept all my life, keeps rest away from me—I know well how Judas felt when he sold his Lord."