, and pluck out the right eye, if
tainted with this devilish sin. She spoke sternly and well. The last
comer said, that her words might be brought to the proof, for it had
been whispered that Hota had named others, and some from the most
religious families of Salem, whom she had seen among the unholy
communicants at the sacrament of the Evil One. And Grace replied that
she would answer for it, all godly folk would stand the proof, and
quench all natural affection rather than that such a sin should grow
and spread among them. She herself had a weak bodily dread of
witnessing the violent death even of an animal; but she would not let
that deter her from standing amidst those who cast the accursed
creature out from among them on the morrow morning.

Contrary to her wont, Grace Hickson told her family much of this
conversation. It was a sign of her excitement on the subject that she
thus spoke, and the excitement spread in different forms through her
family. Faith was flushed and restless, wandering between the
keeping-room and the kitchen, and questioning her mother particularly
as to the more extraordinary parts of Hota's confession, as if she
wished to satisfy herself that the Indian witch had really done those
horrible and mysterious deeds.

Lois shivered and trembled with affright at the narration, and the idea
that such things were possible. Occasionally she found herself
wandering off into sympathetic thought for the woman who was to die,
abhorred of all men, and unpardoned by God, to whom she had been so
fearful a traitor, and who was now, at this very time--when Lois sat
among her kindred by the warm and cheerful firelight, anticipating many
peaceful, perchance happy, morrows--solitary, shivering,
panic-stricken, guilty, with none to stand by her and exhort her, shut
up in darkness between the cold walls of the town prison. But Lois
almost shrank from sympathising with so loathsome an accomplice of
Satan, and prayed for forgiveness for her charitable thought; and yet,
again, she remembered the tender spirit of the Saviour, and allowed
herself to fall into pity, till at last her sense of right and wrong
became so bewildered that she could only leave all to God's disposal,
and just ask that He would take all creatures and all events into His
hands.

Prudence was as bright as if she were listening to some merry
story--curious as to more than her mother would tell her--seeming to
have no particular terror of witche