STRANGE TIDINGS.
When the footsteps of her visitors died away in the ante-room, she became conscious of the package which Norman Lovel had given her, and going up to a window sunk deep in the wall, and dim with dust, she broke the seal and began to read its contents. All at once her face lighted up. She read one passage over and over again, clasped her hand in a delirium of sudden gladness, and cried out in her prison:
"Thank God! oh, thank my God that I have lived to know this! But to learn it now, with only a few hours of life. Father of heaven, grant me a little time—just a little time, in which I may taste all the fulness of this great blessing!"
She walked the room up and down, seized with a wild desire to go free. Her bonds for the first time seemed insupportable. The sound of a turnkey near her door drew her that way. She beat against the massive oak with her hand, calling aloud. A heavy key grated in its lock, and the man came in.
"Go," she said, handing him a piece of money; "send a messenger after the minister, Samuel Parris, who has left me but now. Say that I would speak with him at once. Lose no time, I beseech you."
The man closed the door, turned the key in its lock, and Barbara was alone again—alone, with what different thoughts to those that had occupied her when Lovel came in! Thrilling excitement, eager hope, a wild commotion of feelings forbade all connected thoughts. She walked the floor—she clasped and unclasped her hands—words of tender endearment dropped from her lips. Mine mine! mine! The baby that they told me was dead—so beautiful! so generous! Ah, after this wonderful blessing I should be ready to die. But now the fear of death is terrible. All the life within me rises up to reject it. I would live to a good old age. He, my son—my own dear son—should watch the gray hair stealing over my head, and love me all the better for them. It must be pleasant to grow old in the sight of one's child. This is why he loved me so. I could not understand it—nor could he. How I longed to kiss him as he knelt before me not an hour since! To-morrow I shall see him again. To-morrow—oh, my God! what is to happen then!
She paused in her walk, and stood in the middle of the floor, struck dumb and white by a terrible thought. How fate mocked her! This revelation, which had thrilled her whole being with new-born joy, was after all only a temptation to entice her from the sacrifice she had resolved to make. On all sides events seemed forcing her on to death. Now, when life might have been so sweet, she must turn resolutely away from it, and meet her awful fate. Pale still, dumb with mighty anguish, Barbara fell upon her knees and prayed. All things conspired against her. Death, that she had considered with such resignation an hour before, was now surrounded with the bitterness of revolt. Her heart yearned for the life which it still rejected.
She knelt and prayed, wringing her hands and crying on God for help—not to escape her doom, but to bear it now that existence had been made so precious. She arose firm and resolute, but not calm—that she could never be again. The struggle in her soul was terrible; but the spirit of self-abnegation grew strong within her, and would prevail.
When Samuel Parris entered the dungeon again, he scarcely recognized the prisoner; her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes like stars. A hundred lives seemed to have been crowded into that one hour.
Barbara went up to the minister, and took his hand with an eager grasp.