own stepped forth from the shadow of the trees
and approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful
brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He
could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father
beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a
woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him
back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step, nor
to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon
Gookin seized his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came
also the slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse,
that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had
received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was
she. And there stood the proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.

"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your
race. Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My
children, look behind you!"

They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the
fiend worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on
every visage.

"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from
youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own
sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful
aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping
assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret
deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton
words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager
for widows' weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him
sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste
to inherit their fathers' wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not,
sweet ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the
sole guest to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts
for sin ye shall scent out all the places--whether in church,
bedchamber, street, field, or forest--where crime has been committed,
and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one
mighty blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate,
in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked
arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human
power--than my power at its utmost--can make manifest