Ah—another shot—we are pursued by a troop, and that boy is picking them off—
O Father of mercies! I hope not.
Stay you here—I’ll be back in a moment—woa—woa!—
George——George—
Don’t be alarmed—stay where you are—keep in the shadow, and if I do not come back immediately, or if you see me pursued, or if—woa, woa—or if you see the mare prick up her ears, don’t wait for me, but make the best of your way over that hill yonder—woa!—keep out o’ the high road and you are safe.
Saying this, he rode off without waiting for a reply, intending to follow in the rear of the troop, and to lead them astray at the risk of his life, should they appear to be in pursuit of the fugitives. He had not gone far, when his horse, hearing the tread of other horses—a heavy tramp, like that of a troop of cavalry on the charge, sounding through the still midnight air, gave a loud long neigh. It was immediately answered by four or five horses afar off, and by that on which the poor girls were mounted.
The preacher saw that there was but one hope now, and he set off at full speed therefore, intending to cross the head of the troop and provoke them to a chase; the manœuvre succeeded until they saw that he was alone, after which they divided their number, and while one party pursued him, another took its way to the very spot where the poor girls were abiding the issue. He and they both were captured—they were all three taken, alive—though man after man of the troop fell from his horse, by shot after shot from a foe that no one of the troop could see, as they galloped after the fugitives. They were all three carried back to Salem, Burroughs prepared for the worst, Rachel afraid only for Elizabeth, and Elizabeth more dead than alive.
But why seek to delay the catastrophe? Why pause upon that, the result of which every body can foresee? They put him upon trial on the memorable fifth day of August (1692) in the midst of the great thunder-storm. Having no proper court of justice in the Plymouth-colony at this period, they made use of a Meeting-House for the procedure, which lasted all one day and a part of the following night—a night never to be forgotten by the posterity of them that were alive at the time. He was pale and sick and weary, but his bearing was that of a good man—that of a brave man too, and yet he shook as with an ague, when he saw arrayed against him, no less than eight confessing witches, five or six distempered creatures who believed him to be the cause of their malady, Judith Hubbard, a woman whose character had been at his mercy for a long while (He knew that of her, which if he had revealed it before she accused him, would have been fatal to her) John Ruck his own brother-in-law, two or three of his early and very dear friends of the church, in whom he thought he could put all trust, and a score of neighbors on whom he would have called at any other time to speak in his favor. What was he to believe now?—what could he believe? These witnesses were not like Judith Hubbard; they had not wronged him, as she had—they were neither hostile to him, nor afraid of him in the way she was afraid of him. They were about to take away his life under a deep sense of duty to their Father above. His heart swelled with agony, and shook—and stopped, when he saw this—and a shadow fell, or appeared to fall on the very earth about him. It was the shadow of another world.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A brief and faithful account of the issue ... a few words more, and the tale of sorrow is done. “The confessing witches testified,” to give the language of a writer who was an eye-witness of the “trial that the prisoner had been at witch-meetings with them, and had seduced and compelled them to the snares of witchcraft; that he promised them fine clothes for obeying him; that he brought poppets to them and thorns to stick into the poppets for afflicting other people, and that he exhorted them to bewitch all Salem-Village, but to do it gradually.”