The anger in his face was terrible, his hand sprung upwards as if to smite her. She shrunk away into the shadow of the pine, thinking thus to escape his fiery glances.
"Step into the light again, that your face may unsay the cowardly words of your tongue!"
"I dare not—you terrify me. Why tell this horrible story here? I am young, helpless, afraid sometimes, and talk like this takes away my strength. I cannot think of this dying woman's curse without dread. The judgment of God must follow it, and the helpless child, with whom its power was left—but perhaps she died."
"And if she had, was not the son left, the Bermuda slave, with King Philip's blood burning beneath the lash, to remind him of the legacy of hate left against her people by his martyred ancestress?"
"It was an evil inheritance from a woman who wrought much trouble in the church, though the atonement was enough to wring one's heart. This Anna Hutchinson, who died under the tomahawk, was a heretic—a free thinker, who would not forgive her enemies as Christ did, but died hurling curses back upon the people who perhaps only sought to win her once more to the true faith."
"Hold!" shouted the chief, seizing her by the arm and dragging her into the moonlight; "hold, before the word withers your tongue—Anna Hutchinson was your grandmother."
Abigail Williams cried out like a doe when the arrow pierces it.
"The woman who sleeps there is her eldest daughter, the wife of King Philip!"
"And I—I," whispered the poor creature—writhing as if in pain.
"You are the child."