“See you not, good people,” he cried, turning triumphantly to the crowd. “The talisman has done its work and then has vanished, yet the maid claims there is no witchcraft here. Surely she is bewitched herself or else is in league with the accused woman and her sorcery.”
“No, no,” exclaimed Alisoun, all trace of her terror gone, “you shall hear my story before you judge. I went to Mother Garford, whom people call the Wise Woman, to buy a love charm, that much is true. It was folly I know, and I blush for it, but maids in this village have done the same thing for many and many a year before this. The charm that Mother Garford gave us, a little, round, white stone, she said had no power alone, but must be joined with neat, well-ordered ways, with cheerful faces and clean, shining houses to give it any potency.”
The women in the crowd looked at each other. This sounded, surely, more like ordinary common sense than like witchcraft.
“I was to keep the stone for seven days and then give it to my friend,” Alisoun went on, “but with every day I grew to hate myself and it the more. Upon the last one I went for a long walk upon the beach, to think the matter out, once and for all. Suddenly my scorn of my own folly grew so great that I plucked the charm from my pocket and flung it into the sea. A moment later, however, I regretted what I had done, for now the talisman was gone forever and Cyn—that other would be sorely disappointed. Since I could not bear the shame of asking Mother Garford for another, I picked up a pebble from the beach where lay ten thousand just like the one I had flung away, and where, I doubt not, the Wise Woman had found it in the first place. And the next day I gave the stone to my comrade for a charm.”
“And she who had it after you, won her lover with but a plain white stone?” asked the chief magistrate, interested in spite of himself.
“With just a plain white stone and a happy heart,” answered Alisoun. “It seemed to be enough.”
“He-hem!” The dignified magistrate was just able to suppress a chuckle by putting his hand before his mouth. He glanced nervously at Master Cotton Mather, who stood frowning and nonplussed. While he waited, Hugh Atherton, standing among the spectators, raised his voice so that all could hear.
“I also would say a word for this poor old woman,” he began. “She was my nurse when I was a boy, and a simpler, gentler soul has never lived.”
“Master Atherton,” shouted Cotton Mather suddenly. “You who would be a minister some day, have a care what you do. Think not that you can ever find a church to receive you, if it be known that you defended a proven witch and turned Devil’s Advocate.”
“I should not be worthy of a church,” retorted Hugh, “did I stand by in silence and let justice go so woefully awry. Here are grave and learned men threatening the life of a poor, quavering old dame, and here are none who dare to speak for her save a woman, a young maid and a little boy. Where is our manhood, to be so afraid at such a time? Do you remember,” he went on, looking from one to another of those who stood so intently listening, “you—and you—and you, that day in the school house, when some of us, as children, sat upon the benches, and some of you, as grown men, stood about the walls and listened to the words that Master Simon spoke in our midst? It was of priests of the Roman Church and of Free-Thinkers and Quakers that we were in such deadly terror then, although we have since learned to let them dwell in peace and know that they can bring us no harm. But to-day we cower before a new fear, of spells and witchcraft and muttering old women, and it would be well could Master Simon rise up from the grave to soothe our terrors with those famous words of his—‘Walk not in fear, ye men of God!’”