note. alsoe he weares a sword.”
“Well-a-day!” laughed the student as he finished, “this is a pretty joke.”
“It be no joke at all, sir,” said Abigail, “and ye will pardon my frowardness in contradicting ye, for my dear friend Deliverance will be hanged o’ Saturday for witchery.” And putting the kerchief to her eyes she wept afresh. As she did so, she heard a strange sound like a groan, and looked up quickly.
The student was leaning against the elm, his eyes closed and his face whiter than the paper which had fluttered from his fingers to the ground.
“Haps it that ye ken her, sir?” she asked in an awed whisper.
He looked at her and tried to regain his composure. His lips moved dumbly. He turned away and put his hand over his eyes, leaning once more against the tree. When he looked again at Abigail, she saw that tears bedimmed his eyes. This exhibition of feeling on the part of this gay student seemed an even more serious thing than the fact that Deliverance was in jail, or that she herself had passed a night in the forest, exposed to savages and wolves.
The student, looking at the little maid’s troubled, tear-stained countenance, smiled in a faint, pitiful fashion, bidding her have hope and cheer. But his voice faltered and broke.
Something in his smile arrested Abigail’s attention. Suddenly, a light of recognition breaking over her face, she put forth her hands, crying joyfully: “Ye be Ronald. Ye be Deliverance’s brother. She telled me to look for ye, but I ne’er suspicioned it to be ye. But when ye smiled I thought o’ her, and now I have remembrance o’ having seen ye in Salem Town.”
Young Wentworth made no reply save by a groan. “Long have I misdoubted these trials for witchery,” he muttered. “It tempts one to atheism. She, Deliverance, a witch, to be cast into prison! a light-hearted, careless child! God himself will pour out His righteous wrath upon her judges if they so much as let a hair of her head be harmed. They have convicted her falsely, falsely! Come,” he cried, turning fiercely upon Abigail, “come, we will rouse the town! We shall see if such things can be done in the name of the law. We shall see.”
Now such anger had been in his eyes as to have burned away his tears, but all at once his fierceness died and his voice broke.