Then the witness touched the chain and saw that the prisoner spoke truth. It seemed like handling drops of frozen water. She asked what they were good for, and what use they could be put to. At which the lady sat the wreath upon her head, hung the chain around her neck, and fastened the handcuffs to her wrist with a snap that sounded like the click of a lock. She stood close by the window, and it appeared as if a rainbow had been broken over her.
Then the witness asked what the stones were called. The prisoner did not answer, but took them from her head and arms with a deep sigh, saying that they were of little use to her, and only made her heart ache. Then she put them up in a leather box lined with red velvet, and pressed them down into her trunk.
The witness had heard that witches sometimes crowned themselves with fire; and this thing troubled her even then, for the lady had not acted like herself, but turned red and white in the same breath, and spoke sharply, as she had never done before. The witness had not wished to stay in the room after that. When Barbara Stafford came out she looked very anxious, and asked Goody Brown not to mention any thing about the stones she had seen, or the rich garments packed in her trunk, as the farm-house stood in a lonely place, and the knowledge that such things could be found there might tempt robbers, she said.
This request, and the evident anxiety of the prisoner, had given the witness some troubled thoughts, but she had not really considered the fiery stones as witch ornaments till after Barbara Stafford's visit that night, when the shadows swarmed so thickly along her path.
Here the judge asked if the prisoner's trunk had been searched, and was answered that a thorough examination had been made, but no jewels found.
Then Goody Brown remembered another event. One day she had gone down to the wharf to carry her husband's dinner to him on shipboard, and was returning home, when a young man, who looked like a foreigner, came from the direction of her dwelling, carrying a small travelling-bag in his hand. He passed her, walking fast, and lifting his hat as if she had been a lady.
But what was there in this to implicate the prisoner?
Nothing, only that same man had come to the house to ask for a drink of milk on the very day that Barbara was rescued from the waves, and the housewife had caught a glimpse of him coming out of her room as she lay sleeping there. Besides, the boxes which had disappeared so strangely were his property. More than this. When Goody went back to her house she found the door open, and the trunk in which Barbara Stafford had packed the witch crown had been moved from its place. The lock was secure. But she knew that it had been opened, by a girdle of blue ribbon which hung over the edge, and was half shut in.
Was this all the witness had to say?
Yes; she knew nothing more, except that in every thing the lady had been kind and gentle in her house—more like an angel of light than a witch. She had again and again heard her praying in the night. Besides, she had given her money to buy a marble grave-stone for the two children who had left her house so lonesome.