thoughts creeping into thoughts, or perfume of flowers in the dark. The melting airs slipped into silence, and Hortense shut her eyes, "to get the memory of it," she said. I thought she meant some new-fangled tune.
"This is memory enough for me," said I.
"Oh?" asked Hortense, and she uncovered all the blaze of the dark lights hid in those eyes.
"Faith, Hortense," I answered, like a moth gone giddy in flame, "your naughty music wakes echoes of what souls must hear in paradise."
"Then it isn't naughty," said Hortense, beginning to play fiercely, striking false notes and discords and things.
"Hortense," said I.
"No—Ramsay!" cried Hortense, jangling harder than ever.
"But—yes!—Hortense——"
And in bustled M. Picot, hastier than need, methought.
"What, Hillary? Not a-bed yet, child? Ha!—crow's-feet under eyes to-morrow! Bed, little baggage! Forget not thy prayers! Pish! Pish! Good-night! Good-night!"
That is the way an older man takes it.
"Now, devil fly away with that prying wench of a Deliverance Dobbins!" ejaculated M. Picot, stamping about. "Oh, I'll cure her fanciful fits! Pish! Pish! That frump and her fits! Bad blood, Ramsay; low-bred, low-bred! 'Tis ever the way of her kind to blab of aches and stuffed stomachs that were well if left empty. An she come prying into my chemicals, taking fits when she's caught, I'll mix her a pill o' Deliverance!" And M. Picot laughed heartily at his own joke.
The next morning I was off to the trade. Though I hardly acknowledged the reason to myself, any youth can guess why I made excuse to come back soon. As I rode up, Rebecca stood at our gate. She had no smile. Had I not been thinking of another, I had noticed the sadness of her face; but when she moved back a pace, I flung out some foolishness about a gate being no bar if one had a mind to jump. Then she brought me sharp to my senses as I sprang to the ground.
"Ramsay," she exclaimed, "M. Picot and Mistress Hortense are in jail charged with sorcery! M. Picot is like to be hanged! An they do not confess, they may be set in the bilboes and whipped. There is talk of putting Mistress Hortense to the test."
"The test!"
'Twas as if a great weight struck away power to think, for the test meant neither more nor less than torture till confession were wrung from agony. The night went black and Rebecca's voice came as from some far place.
"Ramsay, you are hurting—you are crushing my hands!"
Poor child, she was crying; and the words I would have said stuck fast behind sealed lips. She seemed to understand, for she went on:
"Deliverance Dobbins saw strange things in his house. She went to spy. He hath crazed her intellectuals. She hath dumb fits."
Now I understood. This trouble was the result of M. Picot's threat; but little Rebecca's voice was tinkling on like a bell in a dome.
"My father hath the key to their ward. My father saith there is like to be trouble if they do not confess—"
"Confess!" I broke out. "Confess what? If they confess the lie they will be burned for witchcraft. And if they refuse to confess, they will be hanged for not telling the lie. Pretty justice! And your holy men fined one fellow a hundred pounds for calling their justices a pack of jackasses——"
"Sentence is to be pronounced to-morrow after communion," said Rebecca.
"After communion?" I could say no more. On that of all days for tyranny's crime!
God forgive me for despairing of mankind that night. I thought freedom had been won in the Commonwealth war, but that was only freedom of body. A greater strife was to wage for freedom of soul.
CHAPTER IV
REBECCA AND JACK BATTLE CONSPIRE
'Twas cockcrow when I left pacing the shore where we had so often played in childhood; and through the darkness came the howl of M. Picot's hound, scratching outside the prison gate.
As well reason with maniacs as fanatics, say I, for they hide as much folly under the mask of conscience as ever court fool wore 'neath painted face. There was Mr. Stocking, as well-meaning a man as trod earth, obdurate beyond persuasion against poor M. Picot under his charge. Might I not speak to the French doctor through the bars of his window? By no means, Mr. Stocking assured. If once the great door were unlocked, who could tell what black arts a sorcerer might use?
"Look you, Ramsay lad," says he, "I've had this brass key made against his witchcraft, and I do not trust it to the hands of the jailer."
Then, I fear, I pleaded too keenly; for, suspecting collusion with M. Picot, the warden of the court-house grew frigid and bade me ask Eli Kirke's opinion on witchcraft.
"'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,'" rasped Eli Kirke, his stern eyes ablaze from an inner fire. "'A man' also, or woman, that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death.' Think you M. Picot burns incense to the serpent in his jars for the healing of mankind?" he demanded fiercely.
"Yes," said I, "'tis for the healing of mankind by experimentation with chemicals. Knowledge of God nor chemicals springs full grown from man's head, Uncle Eli. Both must be learned. That is all the meaning of his jars and crucibles. He is only trying to learn what laws God ordained among materials. And when M. Picot makes mistakes, it is the same as when the Church makes mistakes and learns wisdom by blunders."
Eli Kirke blinked his eyes as though my monstrous pleadings dazed him.
"'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,'" he cried doggedly. "Do the Scriptures lie, Ramsay Stanhope? Tell me that?"
"No," said I. "The Scriptures condemn liars, and the man who pretends witchcraft is a liar. There's no such thing. That is why the Scriptures command burning." I paused. He made no answer, and I pleaded on.
"But M. Picot denies witchcraft, and you would burn him for not lying."
Never think to gain a stubborn antagonist by partial concession. M. Radisson used to say if you give an enemy an inch he will claim an ell. 'Twas so with Eli Kirke, for he leaped to his feet in a fine frenzy and bade me cease juggling Holy Writ.
"'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,'" he shouted. "'Tis abomination! It shall utterly be put away from you! Because of this hidden iniquity the colony hath fallen on evil days. Let it perish root and branch!"
But Tibbie breaks in upon his declamation by throwing wide the library door, and in marches a line of pale-faced ascetics, rigid of jaw, cold of eye, and exalted with that gloomy fervour which counts burning life's highest joy. Among them was the famous witch-hanger of after years, a mere youth then, but about his lips the hard lines of a spiritual zeal scarce differing from pride.
"God was awakening the churches by marvellous signs," said one, extending a lank, cold hand to salute Eli Kirke.
"Have we not wrestled mightily for signs and wonders?" demanded another with jaw of steel. And one description of the generation seeking signs was all but off the tip of my tongue.
"Some aver there be no witches—so fearfully hath error gone abroad," lamented young Mather, keen to be heard then, as he always was. "Brethren, toleration would make a kingdom of chaos, a Sodom, a Gomorrah, a Babylon!"
Faith, it needed no horoscope to forecast that young divine's dark future!
I stood it as long