“I could keep from you no longer, sweetheart,” he cried.
Deliverance’s arms tightened around his neck. “I be o’er glad to see ye, dear Ronald,” she said, laying her head on his shoulder, “and, oh, let it pleasure ye not to dilly-dally, but to take me to father, for I be fair weary to see him?”
So the Fellow of Harvard, with a word to his Excellency for permission, slowly descended the ladder with his precious burden in his arms.
Thus Deliverance returned to her father.
Chapter XX
The Great Physician
When the excitement had subsided somewhat, Lord Christopher was seen to lean forward with renewed earnestness, raising his hand impressively.
“My dear people,” he said, and the great physician’s voice was tender as if speaking to sick and fretful children, “my dear people, God hath afflicted you more sorely with this plague of witchery than with the Black Plague itself. Yet it lies with you to check this foul disease. The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ But it also commands, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ Abide by the latter injunction, that you save your souls from sin and let not your land run red with innocent blood. Let each one of you be so exalted in goodness that evil cannot enter into you. But, and my words on witchery impress you not, let me at least beseech you who are of man’s estate and have catched a child in sin, to remember that it but does as those around it, and is therefore to be dealt by tenderly.
“And yet another subject am I driven to speak to you upon.