Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/310

 been borne. "Lo! all things can be borne." And it was this bitterest portion that poor Alice was called upon to suffer.

The last terrible moment had come. The sun had climbed to the mid-heaven, as if to look down upon the sacrifice, when the door of the prison was opened, and the unhappy prisoner came forth—not led forth, for the brave and dauntless old woman came out unsupported, and walking with a firm, unfaltering step.

There was a marked and striking difference between Goody Nurse and Mistress Elsie Campbell. Both went to their death unflinchingly; but one had the meek resignation of a humble Christian, the other the fierce heroism of a Stoic: the first was saintly, the last was majestic.

Conscious of her own integrity, and of the falsity of the malicious charges against her, and full, as we have seen, of unmitigated contempt for the tribunal before which she had been so unjustly condemned, the spirit of the old Scottish Covenanters was roused within her. Her face, though perfectly colorless, was set as a flint; and, like the Indian