undo the evil she had wrought. Grace lifted up
her right hand, and held it up on high, as she doomed Lois to be
accursed for ever, for her deadly sin, and her want of mercy even at
this final hour. And, lastly, she summoned her to meet her at the
judgment-seat, and answer for this deadly injury done to both souls and
bodies of those who had taken her in, and received her when she came to
them an orphan and a stranger.

Until this last summons, Lois had stood as one who hears her sentence
and can say nothing against it, for she knows all would be in vain. But
she raised her head when she heard her aunt speak of the judgment-seat,
and at the end of Grace's speech she, too, lifted up her right hand, as
if solemnly pledging herself by that action, and replied:

'Aunt! I will meet you there. And there you will know my innocence of
this deadly thing. God have mercy on you and yours!'

Her calm voice maddened Grace, and making a gesture as if she plucked
up a handful of dust of the floor, and threw it at Lois, she cried:

'Witch! witch! ask mercy for thyself--I need not your prayers. Witches'
prayers are read backwards. I spit at thee, and defy thee!' And so she
went away.

Lois sat moaning that whole night through. 'God comfort me! God
strengthen me!' was all she could remember to say. She just felt that
want, nothing more,--all other fears and wants seemed dead within her.
And when the gaoler brought in her breakfast the next morning, he
reported her as 'gone silly;' for, indeed, she did not seem to know
him, but kept rocking herself to and fro, and whispering softly to
herself, smiling a little from time to time.

But God did comfort her, and strengthen her too late on that Wednesday
afternoon, they thrust another 'witch' into her cell, bidding the two,
with opprobrious words, keep company together. The new comer fell
prostrate with the push given her from without; and Lois, not
recognizing anything but an old ragged woman lying helpless on her face
on the ground, lifted her up; and lo! it was Nattee--dirty, filthy
indeed, mud-pelted, stone-bruised, beaten, and all astray in her wits
with the treatment she had received from the mob outside. Lois held her
in her arms, and softly wiped the old brown wrinkled face with her
apron, crying over it, as she had hardly yet cried over her own
sorrows. For hours she tended the old Indian woman--tended her bodily
woes; and as the poor scattered senses of the savage creature came