A lamp was burning on the table beside her. Near it was a skull, and near this emblem of mortality an hourglass, running fast.
The windows and doors of the building were closed, and it would seem the unhappy lady was a prisoner.
She had been brought there secretly that night, with what intent she knew not; but she felt sure it was with no friendly design towards herself. Early in the day three horsemen had arrived at her retreat in Pendle Forest, and without making any charge against her, or explaining whither they meant to take her, or indeed answering any inquiry, had brought her off with them, and, proceeding across the country, had arrived at a forester's hut on the outskirts of Hoghton Park. Here they tarried till evening, placing her in a room by herself, and keeping strict watch over her; and when the shadows of night fell, they conveyed her through the woods, and by a private entrance to the gardens of the Tower, and with equal secresy to the pavilion, where, setting a lamp before her, they left her to her meditations. All refused to answer her inquiries, but one of them, with a sinister smile, placed the hourglass and skull beside her.
Left alone, the wretched lady vainly sought some solution of the enigma—why she had been brought thither. She could not solve it; but she determined, if her capture had been made by any lawful authorities, to confess her guilt and submit to condign punishment.
Though the windows and doors were closed as before mentioned, sounds from without reached her, and she heard confused and tumultuous noises as if from a large assemblage. For what purpose were they met? Could it be for her execution? No—there were strains of music, and bursts of laughter. And yet she had heard that the burning of a witch was a spectacle in which the populace delighted—that they looked upon it as a show, like any other; and why should they not laugh, and have music at it? But could she be executed without trial, without judgment? She knew not. All she knew was she was guilty, and deserved to die. But when this idea took possession of her, the laughter sounded in her ears like the yells of demons, and the strains like the fearful harmonies she had heard at weird sabbaths.
All at once she recollected with indescribable terror, that on this very night the compact she had entered into with the Fiend expired. That at midnight, unless by her penitence and prayers she had worked out her salvation, he could claim her. She recollected also, and with increased uneasiness, that the man who had set the hourglass on the table, and who had regarded her with a sinister smile as he did so, had said it was eleven o'clock! Her last hour then had arrived—nay, was partly spent, and the moments were passing swiftly by.
The agony she endured at this thought was intense. She felt as if reason were forsaking her, and, but for her determined efforts to resist it, such a crisis might have occurred. But she knew that her eternal welfare depended upon the preservation of her mental balance, and she strove to maintain it, and in the end succeeded.
Her gaze was fixed intently on the hourglass. She saw the sand trickling silently but swiftly down, like a current of life-blood, which, when it ceased, life would cease with it. She saw the shining grains above insensibly diminishing in quantity, and, as if she could arrest her destiny by the act, she seized the glass, and would have turned it, but the folly of the proceeding arrested her, and she set it down again.
Then horrible thoughts came upon her, crushing her and overwhelming her, and she felt by anticipation all the torments she would speedily have to endure. Oceans of fire, in which miserable souls were for ever tossing, rolled before her. Yells, such as no human anguish can produce, smote her ears. Monsters of frightful form yawned to devour her. Fiends, armed with terrible implements of torture, such as the wildest imagination cannot paint, menaced her. All hell, and its horrors, was there, its dreadful gulf, its roaring furnaces, its rivers of molten metal, ever burning, yet never consuming its victims. A hot sulphureous atmosphere oppressed her, and a film of blood dimmed her sight.
She endeavoured to pray, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. She looked about for her Bible, but it had been left behind when she was taken from her retreat. She had no safeguard—none.