“Stop, Amos.” Never had Alisoun heard her mother’s voice sound so tense or so stern. “Now tell me all of this matter and—wait, how in the world came these cobwebs in your hair?”
The boy hung his head. His excited enthusiasm seemed suddenly to have fled from him.
“Richard and Thomas Porter and I,” he explained slowly, “we could not see the witch’s face for the crowd, since all were so tall and we so little. So Richard said he knew a famous way and showed us how to get into the jail before the others came, and how to climb up upon a beam in the public corridor so that we could see her plain as she passed below. But the wood was rotten and just as we were settled it gave a great crack, so down we scrambled in a hurry, I can tell you, lest it fall with us. We slipped out before any one found us and the crowd, coming in, passed so close that we saw the witch after all. I think the beam must have fallen in the end, for later we heard a great crash within and a cry went up from all the people. Oh, but you should have seen the witch, she looked—”
“That is enough,” said Margeret, stopping him abruptly. “She looked as would any old woman who was frightened and in trouble. Suppose I were to be dragged to prison for a witch, Amos?”
“You—you a witch!” The little boy cried out in horror at the very thought.
“As much a witch as old Mother Garford,” returned Margeret, “and so, since she has ever been a good friend to us, we must go up to the meeting house to-morrow and testify in her behalf.”
For such an errand Amos was willing enough; it was Alisoun who hung back, trembling and tearful. It was revealed that she and her friend, Cynthia Turner, had gone to Mother Garford some weeks before, to buy a love charm, just as had so many of the other maids of Hopewell long before the rumours of witchcraft arose. Cynthia had wished to make more certain of the heart of Hugh Atherton, the lad who was studying at Harvard College to be a minister, while Alisoun wished to assure the safe return of the young ship’s captain, Gilbert Sheffield, from his long voyage to the West Indies. The charm, in her eyes, had proved to have no magic power whatever, so she had nearly forgotten the whole matter.
“It may be,” said Margeret, when she had heard her daughter’s confession, “that by telling your story before the people you can prove that Mother Garford’s spells are of an innocent kind and so can clear her. Can you do that, my child?”
“Oh, no, mother! Oh, no, no!” cried Alisoun wildly. “To stand up before them all and confess that I bought a charm to bring Gilbert Sheffield safe home? Oh, never, never! You will not make me, mother?”
“No, I will not force you,” said Margeret, “but shall an old woman die disgraced for want of a word to save her when that word can be spoken, even at the cost of pain and humiliation? Go down into the garden and take counsel with yourself. You shall act in the matter only as you choose.”