CHAPTER XIV.
ANNA HUTCHINSON'S CURSE.
The savage lifted Abigail from the earth where she had fallen, and went on with kindling excitement.
"No, her children were not all slain. Two escaped—one, a young girl pale as the first cherry blossoms, with hair like the sunshine in August. The other was a babe, four weeks old, which this brave woman took from her bosom just before the tomahawk cleft her brain. These children were carried into the forest, passed from tribe to tribe, till the eldest grew to womanhood. But she remembered her mother, and the horrible scene of her murder, while she knew nothing of the persecutions that drove that mother among the Indians, when the chiefs were on the war-path. So she never took kindly to the tribe, but always pined for a sight of her own people. At last she fled, carrying the child with her, and came here to the village of Salem."
"Here, here—great heavens, can this be!"
"But they would not let the child of Anna Hutchinson rest; she also dared to think for herself. She was also arraigned before the magnates of the church. Like Anna Hutchinson, her fair shoulders were reddened with stripes. The little child, whom she loved better than her own life, was torn from her arms. Like a wounded deer, they sent her into the wilderness, alone, alone—bleeding at every step, uttering moans with every breath."
"Oh, this is terrible!" cried Abigail, pressing both hands to her heart.
The Indian took no heed of her anguish, but went on:
"All day and all night long she wandered through the tangled undergrowth, feeding upon the honeysuckle, apples, and wild plums, that grew in her path, calling in despair on the name of her little sister, and praying to her God that she might be so happy as to die. For days and nights she toiled on with only one object—to get farther and farther from the people of her race. As a wounded deer pants for spring-water, she longed for the wigwams and the savage love from which she had fled less than a year before.
"But she was in the deep wilderness now, with no track to guide her way—no hope, nothing but her despair. She could not even cry aloud to the Great Spirit, for his face was hidden. Pale and hungry, with the shoes dropping from her feet, her poor hands torn with the thorns that sought her out as human hate had done, this poor girl wandered on and on, growing fainter and paler each moment. At last she sank down, breathless and exhausted, with great tears rolling slowly from beneath her closed lashes, and the blue of hunger settling around her mouth."