Undetected as she was, Garde was surrounded by this sinister group of men, and was marched away, out of the jail, into the sweet summer’s night air, and so down a deserted street, to a building she had never entered before in her life.
Hardly had the prison been left behind when Adam Rust, swiftly returning, after having readily provided for the safe escape of Goody Dune, came galloping into Boston, his brain on fire with a scheme of boldness.
He had made up his mind to ride straight to the prison, demand admittance, compel the jailer to deliver Garde up at once, carry her straight to a parson’s, marry his sweetheart forthwith, and then take her off to New Amsterdam. Weaver could blame the rescue of the witch to him and be welcome. He could even permit Adam to tie him and gag him, to make the story more complete, but submit he should, or Rust would know the reason. His wild ride had begotten the scheme in his adventure-hungry mind.
He knew the residence of the parson who had married Henry Wainsworth and Prudence Soam, the week before he and Phipps had returned to Massachusetts, for Garde had told him all the particulars, time after time—having marriage in her own sweet thought, as indeed she should. He therefore went first to this parson’s, knocked hotly on the door, to get him out of bed, and bade him be prepared to perform the ceremony within the hour.
The parson had readily agreed, being a man amenable to sense and to the luster of gold in the palm, wherefore Adam had gone swiftly off to work the tour de force on which all else depended. He arrived at the jail when Garde had been gone for fifteen minutes. Here he learned with amazement of the midnight trial to which she had been so summarily led.
Trembling like a leaf, Garde was conducted into a chamber adjoining the room wherein the dread magistrates were sitting, with their minds already convinced that this was a case so flagrant that to permit the witch to live through the night would be to impair the heavenly heritage of every soul in Boston.
Here the girl was left, in charge of Gallows and two other ruffianly brutes, whose immunity from the evil powers of witches had been thoroughly established in former cases. In the meantime her accusers had gone before the magistrates, ahead of herself, to relate the unspeakable things of which Goody Dune had been guilty.
Shaking, not daring to look up, nor to utter a sound, Garde had tried to summon the courage to throw off the whole disguise, laugh at her captors and declare who she was, but before she should arrive in the presence of Grandther Donner, who would protect her and verify her story, at least as to who she was, she could not possibly make the attempt.
Terribly wrought upon by the suspense of waiting to be summoned before that stern tribunal of injustice, Garde began to think of the anger which these unmirthful men might show, when she revealed the joke before their astounded eyes. She swayed, weakly, almost ready to swoon, so great became her alarm.
She could hear the high voices of Psalms Higgler and Isaiah Pinchbecker, penetrating through the door. They were giving their testimony, in which they had been so well coached by Edward Randolph, who was even now in there among the witnesses, disguised, and keeping as much as possible in the background.