The Lord have mercy upon us! cried the people, giving way on every side, without knowing why, and looking toward the high-sea, and holding their breath.
Pho, pho, said the scoffer, a grey-haired man who stood leaning over his crutch with eyes full of pity and sorrow, pho, pho, the noise that you hear is only the noise of the tide.
Nay, nay, Elder Smith, nay, nay, said an associate of the speaker. If it is only the noise of the tide, why have we not heard it before? and why do we not hear it now? just now, when the witch is about to be—
True ... true ... it may not be the Evil one, after all.
The Evil one, Joe Libby! No, no! it is God himself, our Father above! cried the witch, with a loud voice, waving her arms upward, and fixing her eye upon a group of two or three individuals who stood aloof, decorated with the badges of authority. Our Father above, I say! The Governor of governors, and the Judge of judges!... The cart began to move here.... He will reward you for the work of this day! He will refresh you with blood for it! and you too Jerry Pope, and you too Micajah Noyes, and you too Job Smith, and you ... and you ... and you....
Yea of a truth! cried a woman who stood apart from the people with her hands locked and her eyes fixed upon the chief-judge. It was Rachel Dyer, the grandchild of Mary Dyer. Yea of a truth! for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that spilleth his brother’s blood, or taketh his sister’s life by the law—and her speech was followed by a shriek from every hill-top and every house-top, and from every tree and every rock within sight of the place, and the cart moved away, and the body of the poor old creature swung to and fro in the convulsions of death.
CHAPTER V.
It is not a little remarkable that within a few days after the death of Sarah Good, a part of her pretended prophecy, that which was directed by her to the man who called her a witch at the place of death, was verified upon him, letter by letter, as it were.
He was way-laid by a party of the Mohawks, and carried off to answer to the tribe for having reported of them that they ate the flesh of their captives.—It would appear that he had lived among them in his youth, and that he was perfectly acquainted with their habits and opinions and with their mode of warfare; that he had been well treated by their chief, who let him go free at a time when he might lawfully have been put to death, according to the usages of the tribe, and that he could not possibly be mistaken about their eating the flesh of their prisoners. It would appear too, that he had been watched for, a long while before he was carried off; that his path had been beset hour after hour, and week after week, by three young warriors of the tribe, who might have shot him down, over and over again if they would, on the step of his own door, in the heart of a populous village, but they would not; for they had sworn to trap their prey alive, and to bring it off with the hide and the hair on; that after they had carried him to the territory of the Mohawks, they put him on trial for the charge face to face with a red accuser; that they found him guilty, and that, with a bitter laugh, they ordered him to eat of the flesh of a dead man that lay bleeding on the earth before him; that he looked up and saw the old chief who had been his father when he belonged to the tribe, and that hoping to appease the haughty savage, he took some of the detestable food into his mouth, and that instantly—instantly—before he could utter a prayer, they fell upon him with clubs and beat him to death.
Her prophecy therefore did appear to the people to be accomplished; for had she not said to this very man, that for the work of that day, “He should breathe blood and eat blood?”