“Do you not perceive the child is frightened to be so regarded?” cried the Cavalier, impatiently. “I can swear to you, prove to you, her living self was in the forest this morning. In Salem Town, accused falsely of witchery, there languishes a little maid——”
“A little maid,” cried Cotton Mather, still in his strained voice. Suddenly, as if grown faint, he sank upon a chair and covered his eyes with his hands. Thus he remained for several moments, while his companions, awed by his emotion, waited in a silence not unmingled with curiosity. After awhile he took away his hand from his eyes and raised his face. Worn it was by the night’s long ride and lack of food, sad it was, for he had but just come from the death-bed of a beloved parishioner, but above all it was glorified by a transfiguring faith.
“A little maid,” he repeated, and now his voice was tender; “she sits in prison on her straw pallet, knitting, and the good God watches over her.”
In that solemn silence which followed his words, the room lost all semblance to the Governor’s state bed-chamber. Its spacious walls faded and narrowed to a prison cell, wherein on her straw pallet, sat a little maiden knitting.
The silence was broken by a smothered sob. The faithful little friend, her face buried on Lord Christopher’s broad breast, was weeping.
When at last on that kind breast her sobs were hushed, the minister spoke again and she raised her head that she might listen.
He told them how the night before, after his supper at the inn-house, he had retired to his room to study. But he was restless and could not compose his thought, and whatever he wrote was meaningless. So, believing this non-success to be a reproof from the Lord, inasmuch as he was writing on a profane and worldly subject, he laid down his quill and fastened his papers with a weight, that the breeze coming in the open window might not blow them away. Then had he opened his Bible. Now the breeze was grateful to him, for his room was warm. A subtle fragrance of the meadow and the peace of the night seemed to be wafted about him. He was reminded how one of the Patriarchs of old had gone “forth into the fields at even-tide to pray.” This thought was gracious and so won upon him, that he rose and snuffed his candles, and went out into a wide field lying back of the inn.
The moon was not risen, but the night was so fair and holy by reason of the starlight, that the white reflection of some young meadow birches showed in the stream, and, a distance off, he could see the moving shapes of some cows. He heard the tinkling of their bells. He felt no longer restless but at deep peace.
It seemed not long before he heard the night watchman making his rounds, crying all good folk in for the night. He heard him but faintly, however, as in a dream. His heart was exceedingly melted and he felt God in an inexpressible manner, so that he thought he should have fallen into a trance there in the meadow. The summons of the night watchman began to sound louder in his ears, so, reminding himself that the greatest duty was ever the nearest duty, he turned to go toward the inn-house. Just then he saw near the cluster of meadow birches, the little maid he had visited in prison in the afternoon. She was clothed in shining white and transparent in the starlight as a wan ghost.
Still, by the glory in her face, he knew it was not her Dead Shape, but her resurrected self. As he would have spoken she vanished, and only the white trunks of the young birches remained.