→ The conviction is most earnestly forced upon me that God has made of this especial rase a very trial of faith, lest we emBruce Sican when he appears to us in goodly disguise, and persecute him only when he puts on the semblance of an old hag or a middle-aged person. Yet, while God has thus far accorded the most exyniste success to our endeavor to defeat these horrid Wisteria dere is need of mach caution lest the Devil outwit us. so that we most miserably convies the innocent and set the guilty free. Now, the prisoner being young, meseemeth she wis perchance, more foclish than wicked. And when I reflect that men :f much strength and hearty women have confessed than the Black man di tender a book unto them, soliciting them to enter into a league with his Master, and when they refused this abominable specter did summon his demons to torture these poor people, un by reason of their weak flesh, bar against their real desires, they signed themselves to be the servants of the Dev forever.-and. I repeat, that when I redect on this that they who were hearty and of mature age eccld not withstand the torture of being twisted and pricked and pulled and sealed with burning brimstone, how much less ecold a weak, sender maid resist their evil assaults? And I trust that my poor prayers for her salvation will not be refused, bon that she will confess and save her soul."

He turned his earnest gaze upon Deliverance, and, perceiving she was in great fear, he spoke to her gently, bidding her cast of all dread of the Dev abiding rather in the love of God, and this strong in the armor of light, make her confession.

But the little maid was too stupefied by terror to gather much intelligent meaning from his words, and she stared helplessly at him as if stricken dumb.

At her occtioned, and to him, stubborn, silence, his patience vanished.

- Then you are in deed obstinate and of hard heart, and the Lord has cast you of." he cried. He turned to the judges with an impassioned gesture. What better proof could you have that the Devil would indeed beguile the court itself by a fair outward show? Behold a very Sadducee! See in what dire need we stand to permit no false compassion to move us, lest by not proceeding with unwavering justice in this witchery business we work against the very cause of Christ. Still, while I would thus caution you not to let one witch go free, meseemeth it is yet worth while to consider other punishment than by halter

or burning. I have lately been impressed by a Vision from the Invisible World, that it would be pleasing to the Lord to have the lesser criminals punished in a mortifying public fashion until they renounce the Devil. I am apt to think there is some substantial merit in this peculiar recommendation."

A ray of hope was in these last words for the prisoner. Deliverance raised her head eagerly. A lesser punishment! Then she would not be hanged. Oh, what a blessed salvation that she would be placed only in the stocks, or made to stand in a public place until she should confess! And it flashed through her mind that she could delay her confession from day to day until the Cavalier should return.

Cotton Mather caught her sudden changed expression.

The wan little face with its wide, uplifted eyes and halfparted lips acquired a fearful significance. That transfiguring illumination of hope upon her face was to him the phosphorescent playing of diabolical lights.

His compassion vanished. He now saw her only as a subtle instrument of the Devil's to defeat the ministers and the Church. He shuddered at the train of miserable consequences to which his pity might have opened the door, had not the mercy of God showed him his error in time.

"But when you have catched a witch of more than ordinary devilment," he cried, striking the palm of one hand with his clinched fist, "and who, by a fair and most subtle showing, would betray the cause of Christ to her Master, let no weak pity unnerve you, but have at her and hang her, lest but one such witch left in the land acquire power to wreak untold evil and undo all we have done."

Still once again did his deeply concerned gaze seek the prisoner's face, hoping to behold therein some sign of softening.

Beholding it not, he sighed heavily. He would willingly have given his life to save her soul to the good of God and to the glory of his own self-immolation.

"I become more and more convinced that my failure to bring this miserable maid to confession, and indeed the whole assault of the Evil Angels upon the country," he continued, using those words which have been generally accepted as a revelation of his marvelous credulity and self-righteousness, "were intended by Hell as a particular defiance unto my poor endeavors to bring the souls of men unto heaven. Yet will I wage personal war with Satan to drive him from the land."

VOL. XV.-17

He raised his eyes, a light of exaltation sweeping over his face.

"And in God's own appointed time," he cried in a voice that quivered with emotion, " His Peace will again descend upon this fair and gracious land, and we shall be at rest from persecution.'

Whatever of overweening vanity his words expressed, none present seeing his enraptured face might have judged him harshly.

No infatuated self-complacency alone prompted his words, but rather his earnest conviction that he was indeed the instrument of God, and believed himself by reason of his long fastings and prayer, more than any person he knew, in direct communion with the invisible world.

And if his vanity and self-sufficiency held many from loving him, there were few who did not involuntarily do him honor.

Having finished, he sat down, laid his Bible on his knee, and folded his arms across his breast as heretofore. None, looking at him then as he sat facing the people, his chest puffed out with incomparable pride, young, with every sign of piety, withal a famous scholar, and possessed of exceptional personal comeliness, saw how the shadow of the future already touched him, when for his honest zeal in persecuting witches he should be an object of insult and ridicule in Boston Town, people naming their negroes Cotton Mather after him.

During his speech, Deliverance had at first listened eagerly, but, as he continued, her head sank on her breast and hope vanished. Dimly, as in a dream, she heard the judges' voices, the whispering of the people. At last, as a voice speaking a great distance off, she heard her name spoken.

"Deliverance Wentworth," said Chief Justice Stoughton, "you are acquaint with the law. If any man or woman be a witch and hath a familiar spirit, or hath consulted with one, he or she shall be put to death. You have by full and fair trial been proven a witch and found guilty in the extreme. Yet the court will show mercy unto you, if you will heartily, and with a contrite heart, confess that you sinned through weakness, and repent that you did transfer allegiance from God to the Devil."

"I be no witch," cried Deliverance, huskily, "I be no witch. There be another judgment."

The tears dropped from her eyes into her lap and the sweat

rolled down her face. But she could not wipe them away, her arms being bound behind her.

The judge nearest her, he who wore his natural hair and the black cap, was moved to compassion. He leant forward, and with his kerchief wiped the tears and sweat from her face.

"You poor and pitiful child," he said, "estranged from God by reason of your great sin, confess, confess, while there is yet time, lest you be hanged in sin and your soul condemned to eternal burning."

Deliverance comprehended but the merciful act and not the exhortation. She looked at him with the terror and entreaty of a last appeal in her eyes, but was powerless to speak.

Thus because she would not confess to the crime of which she had been proven guilty in the eyes of the law, she was sentenced to be hanged within five days, on Saturday, not later than the tenth nor earlier than the eighth hour. Also, owing to the fact of the confusion and almost ungovernable excitement among the people, it was forbidden any one to visit her, excepting of course the officers of the law, or the ministers to exhort her to confession.

At noon the court adjourned.

First, the judges in their velvet gowns went out of the meeting-house. With the chief justice walked Cotton Mather, conversing learnedly.

Following their departure, two soldiers entered and bade Deliverance rise and go out with them. So, amidst a great silence, she passed down the aisle.

THE WISE WOMAN.

BY MME. DARMESTETER (MARY ROBINSON).

[MARY ROBINSON: Born at Leamington, Feb. 27, 1857. An English poet. In 1888 she married M. Darmesteter, the French Orientalist. She has written: "A Handful of Honeysuckles" (1878), "The Crowned Hippolytus" (1880), a translation of Euripides (1881), "The End of the Middle Ages" (1889: a historical work), etc.]

In the last low cottage in Blackthorn Lane
The Wise Woman lives alone;

The broken thatch lets in the rain,

And the glass is shattered in every pane

With stones the boys have thrown.

For who would not throw stones at a witch,
Take any safe revenge

For the father's lameness, the mother's stitch,
The sheep that died on its back in a ditch,
And the mildewed corn in the grange?

Only be sure to be out of sight

Of the witch's baleful eye!

So the stones, for the most, are thrown at night,
Then a scuffle of feet, a hurry of fright-
How fast those urchins fly!

And a shattered glass is gaping sore
In the ragged window frame,

Or a horseshoe nailed against the door,
Whereunder the witch should pass no more,
Were sayings and doings the same.

The witch's garden is run to weeds,
Never a phlox or a rose,

But infamous growths her brewing needs,
Or slimy mosses the rank soil breeds,
Or tares such as no man sows.

This is the house. Lift up the latch
Faugh, the smoke and the smell!

A broken bench, some rags that catch
The drip of the rain from the broken thatch
Are these the wages of Hell?

Is it for this she earns the fear

And the shuddering hate of her kind? To molder and ache in the hovel here,

With the horror of death ever brooding near,

And the terror of what is behind?

The witch-who wonders?-is bent with cramp,
Satan himself cannot cure her,

For the beaten floor is oozing damp,

And the moon, through the roof, might serve for a lamp, Only a rushlight's surer.

And here some night she will die alone,

When the cramp clutches tight at her heart. Let her cry in her anguish, and sob, and moan, The tenderest woman the village has known Would shudder- but keep apart.