"Oh, my son, God is against us! She is dead! dead!" murmured the old man. Great tears rose and swelled in his eyes, choking his voice; but the anguish he could not speak swept over his face.
"She is safe, father; she has escaped! Lift your eyes, and they can yet discern the ship which carries her out of danger."
"Art thou sure—quite sure, Norman?" cried the old man, clasping his hands in an ecstasy of gratitude.
"Here are those who saw her borne up the sides of the vessel."
"Let us go home, my son. Elizabeth will be sorely anxious," said the old man, struggling to his feet. "But you avouch for this? a mistake would be terrible."
"Yes, yes. Dear lady! She is out of their reach at last, and I much fear neither you nor I will ever see her face again."
"Nay, nay; but I have great need of rest and thought. Let us go home."
Norman helped the old man to his saddle, and the two rode slowly away, following the soldiers. When the sun went down that night, not a human form could be seen along all that trampled shore save one, so cold and beautiful, that but for the garments and those masses of rich, black hair, it might have been chiselled from parian marble. Thus, partly on the sand, partly on the crusted snow, all that was left of that unhappy girl, called Abigail Williams, lay, till the sun set behind those naked trees and the moon arose. Then out of the black depths of the wilderness, came the figure of an old woman, toiling through the snow, and almost bent double. She sat down by the lifeless girl, and attempted to lift her head; but it resisted her hands, and fell back on the snow like marble. Then poor old Tituba stretched out her withered limbs by the side of her dead charge, and winding her arms around that cold form broke into a funereal chant, so sad, so thrillingly mournful, that it wailed through the whispers of those naked tree-boughs with the anguish of a soul in pain. Then along the track she had made in the snow came a file of Indians, whose death-chant swelled with hers into a wild, fierce music. They lifted the young girl from the ground, and bore her away, filling the winter's night with that weird chant as they went. Behind them, following meekly along the beaten path, the lone Indian woman crept, her slow footsteps faltering with age. Still her feeble voice sent forth its death-wail, and thus like a shadow she disappeared.
In a hollow lined with crusted snow and overhung with naked forest-trees, they had laid the young chief Metacomet upon a rude bier formed of evergreen branches, with the foliage fresh upon them. By his side they placed the sister whose life had been broken up so fatally by his kingly ambition. Then these savages, chiefless and wanderers forever more, lifted the bier, and turned their footsteps toward Mount Hope, where the brother and sister were laid in one grave, the last of a kingly and most persecuted race.