Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/286

 was helpless and cramped in chains and bondage; she, to whom "cleanliness was next to godliness," was sickened and disgusted by the dirt and discomfort all around her; and far more than all these lesser evils was the heart's deep craving for the companionship of her child, from whom until now she had never been separated for a single night since Alice's infancy; and now this one treasure of her otherwise desolate heart was ill—possibly dying—and she was kept from her.

This thought exasperated her beyond measure. Her knowledge of her own entire innocence made the unfounded charge seem almost an absurdity in her eyes. She could not realize that others, from a different stand-*point, took different views; and she felt a thorough contempt for what seemed to her the willful blindness of her accusers and prosecutors, and this sentiment she did not hesitate openly to declare.

It was strange that her reliance upon her own innocence should have rendered her thus fearless, with the tragic fate of poor Goody Nurse before her, for she believed in her friend's integrity as fully as in her own.