Deliverance and Abigail Brewster strolled among the tombstones reading their favourite epitaphs. The two little maids, having the innocent and happy hearts of childhood, had found only pleasurable excitement in the witch-panic until the morning Deliverance had been accused by her pupils. But they believed this affair had blown over and remained only a thrilling subject for conversation. Both felt the Devil had made an unsuccessful assault upon Deliverance, and, as she wrote in her diary, sought to destroy her good name with the “Malice of Hell.”
During meeting Deliverance sat with Goodwife Higgins on the women’s side of the building. Her father, being of the gentry, was seated in one of the front pews.
Through the unshuttered windows the sunlight streamed in broadly, and as the air grew warm one could smell the pine and rosin in the boards of the house. Pushed against the wall was the clerk’s table with its plentiful ink-horn and quills.
The seven judges, each of whom had, according to his best light, condemned the guilty and let the innocent go free, during the past week, now sat in a row below the pulpit. Doubtless each felt himself in the presence of the Great Judge of all things and, bethinking himself humbly of his own sins, prayed for mercy.
The soldiers stacked their firearms and sat in a body on the men’s side of the church. Their scarlet uniforms made an unusual amount of colour in the sober meeting-house.
The long hours dragged wearily.
Little children nodded, and their heads fell against their mothers’ shoulders, or dropped into their laps. Sometimes they were given lemon drops or sprigs of sweet herbs. One solemn little child, weary of watching the great cobwebs swinging from the rafters, began to count aloud his alphabet, on ten moist little fingers. He was sternly hushed.
The tithing-man ever tiptoed up and down seeking to spy some offender. When a woman or maid grew drowsy, he brushed her chin with the end of his wand which bore a fox’s tail. But did some goodman nod, he pricked him smartly with the thorned end.
Deliverance loved the singing, and her young voice rang out sweetly as she stood holding her psalm-book, her blue eyes devoutly raised. And the armed watchman pacing the platform above the great door, his keen glance sweeping the surrounding country for any trace of Indians or Frenchmen, joined lustily in the singing.