Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/175

 prisoner, heavily manacled and bound with cords, and placed her in the broad aisle.

Then the Rev. Mr. Noyes, rising like an accusing spirit, pronounced upon her the stern and awful sentence of the Church, which was then regarded as not only excluding her from the Church on earth, but as closing against her the very gates of heaven. Believing she had already transferred her allegiance to the devil, he then and there formally made her over, body and soul, to the great enemy forever and ever.

How the noble but grief-stricken old woman met this new and most appalling stroke of refined cruelty, neither history nor tradition has told us—but it were needless. Our own hearts can reproduce the terrible picture. We can almost see her aged form, as with slow and fettered steps she passed up the accustomed aisle, with the stern guardians of the law on either side of her, the hushed and awe-smitten crowd shrinking away from the pollution of her touch.

We can see the dim, sad eyes turning their piteous gaze from side to side, hoping to catch one glance of love or sympathy or