Tituba shook her head. She had no Bible, and could not be made to comprehend what one meant, though she had lived with the minister at Salem since Abigail was an infant. Hers was a wilder and more romantic religion—the Manitou of the Indians was her God, and she read his word in the leaves of the forest and the rush of the mountain stream. With her, treachery to the whites was faith to the Indian. Had Judas betrayed his enemy, she would have considered him a hero: but to betray his Master—old Tituba could not have understood that!
"You look like her now," whispered the woman, folding her hands over her knees, and rocking back and forth on the floor, as she always did when about to talk of the past.
"My mother—do I look like her?" said Abigail.
"About the eyes, when there is trouble in them; but hers were blue, like a periwinkle in the morning, while yours are darker, and change so."
"And her—that other woman—that grand, sweet-spoken woman, whose spirit will not rest—Anna Hutchinson—my grandmother? Have you seen her, Tituba?"
"Yes, when the warriors brought her into the forest for sacrifice. I was there. I watched the women, while they gathered pitch pine-knots, and scattered turpentine over the wood which the braves heaped on her death fire!"
"Did they torture her?"
"No. The wood was piled high; the Pequod women had brought heaps of pitch pine; the warriors, who held her and her little ones, came forward, ready to throw them on the flames together; they only waited for the chief!"
"And she stood ready for this terrible death?" broke in Abigail. "Was she brave, or was it only in speech that she proved valiant?"
"Brave! The warriors grew proud of their victim, she looked death so grandly in the face. The chief came, and his eye flamed brightly when he saw her. She was worthy of the death fire kindled in his honor."