"And he too?" muttered the old man—"he too?"
Barbara listened keenly, but the words escaped her. Her silence, however, was impressive.
"Let us go forward to the oak yonder," he said, pointing the way with his staff.
Barbara turned, without a word, and walked slowly toward the oak.
They sat down together, the old man and the strange woman—she with a calm look of preparation; he stern and pale, but hesitating how to begin. Her dignity and the grave attention with which she waited took away all his self-possession.
"You would speak with me," Barbara said, at length: "you look agitated. Surely nothing has gone amiss since I left the house!"
The old man's face changed, and his voice trembled as he spoke.
"Lady, I helped to save you from the deep. I surrendered to you the sacred wine after it had touched the lips of the man who stands highest in our land. I have given you shelter in my dwelling, and placed you at the same table with my daughter and my niece; yet so far as your worldly life is concerned, I know you not, neither your outgoing nor your incoming. What could I answer to the Lord, were he to say to me, 'Samuel Parris, who is the woman with whom you have broken bread, and shared the same roof?' I could but reply, 'Lord, I know not—for good or for evil she was cast upon my care, like a drift of sea-weed from the great deep—without a history—without a friend!'"
"And in so much your answer would prove correct. Be satisfied, kind old man, that you have done a Christian duty, for which the poor woman you saved will not prove ungrateful."
The minister shook his head, muttering to himself,