“I see a patch o’ orange tiger-lilies far down the hillside,” he announced, “and near by be a little grave grown o’er with sweetbrier. And there, with her head pillowed on the headstone, be Mistress Deliverance Wentworth, sound in sleep.”
Thus the little maid was found by the tithing-man, and wakened and marched back to church.
As the two neared the entrance the watchman called her softly, “Hey, there, Mistress Deliverance Wentworth, what made ye fall asleep?”
“The Devil set a snare for my feet,” she answered mournfully, not inclined to attach too much blame to herself.
“Satan kens his own,” said the watchman severely, quickly hiding his pipe behind him.
Now, at the moment of the disgraced little maid’s entrance, a great rush of wind swept in and a timber in the rafters was blown down, reaching the floor, however, without injury to any one.
Many there were who later testified to having seen Deliverance raise her eyes just before the timber fell. These believed that she had summoned a demon, who, invisibly entering the meeting-house on the wings of the wind, had sought to destroy it.
The sky, lately so blue, grew leaden gray. So dark it became, that but few could see to read the psalms. Thunder as yet distant could be heard, and the roaring of the wind in the tree-tops, and ever in the pauses of the storm, the ominous booming of the ocean.
The watchman came inside. The tithing-man closed and bolted the great door.