Garde in the meantime had grown nervous with impatience, afraid as she was, of one of those swift, inhuman trials of Goody which so often were the subterfuges of the fanatics for rushing a person pre-condemned, to the death from which there was no escape.
“I have thought the matter over calmly,” said Adam, who knew nothing of real calmness in a moment of daring, “and I feel certain we shall double our chances of success by waiting till dark, or near it, when the jailer might be persuaded to think we could get her away unnoticed noticed by the rabble, and so might consent to the plan, when otherwise he would think he must refuse.”
There was reason in this, as Garde could see. Making Adam promise to take a rest, before the time should be ripe for their enterprise, she went home to David Donner, to set things to rights, and otherwise to keep abreast of her little housewifely duties. She found the old man excited, by a call which had come for his services, at noon.
One of the seven magistrates who sat in the court of Oyer and Terminer, to try the witches, had fallen ill. David had been requested to assume his place. At this wholly unexpected news, Garde felt her heart leap with a sudden rejoicing. If the worst came, Goody would have at least one friend at the trial, to whose words of wisdom the Council had so frequently listened. She ran to the old man and gave him a kiss.
“Oh, I am so glad, dear Grandther,” she said. “They know how wise you are and just!”
“Thankee, child, thankee,” said the white-haired old man, smiling with the pleasure which the whole transaction had excited in his hungering breast. “They recognize me—a little—at last.”
Yet so eager had the girl become, and so frightened of what the results were almost certain to be, if Goody ever came to her trial, during the absence of Governor Phipps, that she and Adam were hastening off to the jail the moment the twilight began to descend on the town.
“Jailer Weaver owes me some little favor,” she said as they came to the place, “and he really owes a great deal to Goody.” Her voice was shaking, her teeth felt inclined to chatter, so excited was all this business making her feel.
Vivid recollections of those terrible moments in which she had come to see Mrs. Weaver and then had hovered about the prison, to liberate Adam, made her cling to his arm in terror of what they were now about to attempt.
Adam himself, wondering if the jailer would by any chance remember his face, and the break he and the poor old beef-eaters had made, had the boldness and the love of adventure come surging up in his heart, till he petted the hilt of his sword with a clenching fist.