"Do you remember seeing her?"

Cora shook her head, and a shadow pa.s.sed over her face.

"Has your father ever told you about her?" asked Goody Nurse.

"No, madame; I have not heard him speak her name."

Then Goody Nurse, with a curiosity that was natural, sought to question the child about her former life; but all she could gain was that her father had been a strolling player.

Players were not in good repute in New England at this time. The prejudice against the theatre, growing out of the rupture between the actors and the Roman Catholic Church, was inherited by the Protestants, who, to some extent, still continue their war against the stage. The fact that George Waters had been an actor was sufficient to condemn him in the eyes of the Puritans.

When Mr. Parris learned that a player was in their midst, he elevated his ecclesiastical nose, and seemed to sniff the brimstone of Satan.

When he learned that some of the dissenting members of his congregation had been guilty of the heinous sin of speaking kind words to the motherless child of a player, he shook his wise head knowingly and declared, "Truly Satan is kind to his own." He made the player a subject for his next Lord's day sermon, in which he sought to pervert the scriptures to suit his prejudices. The subject of witchcraft was beginning to excite some attention, and he managed in almost every sermon to ring in enough of it to keep up the agitation. In the course of his discourse, he declared:

"The New Englanders are a people of G.o.d settled in those, which were the devil's territories, and it may easily be supposed that the devil is exceedingly disturbed, when he perceives such people here, accomplishing the promises of old, made unto our blessed Jesus, that he should have the uttermost parts of the earth for his possessions. There was not a greater uproar among the Ephesians, when the gospel was first brought among them, than there is now among the powers of the air after whom those Ephesians walked, when first the silver trumpets of the gospel made the joyful sound in their dark domain. The devil, thus irritated, hath tried all sorts of methods to overturn this poor plantation."

With this preface he a.s.sailed the unfortunate actor and his innocent child as being tools of his Satanic majesty, and denounced those who would lift the wounded, bleeding and beaten wayfarer from the road-side, carry him home, or offer his unfortunate child a cup of cold water as agents of darkness. Mr. Parris had forgotten some of the commands of the divine Master, whom he professed to follow. He a.s.sailed "the little maid furiously." That child of sorrow and of tears, whom he had never seen before, and whose young heart ached from the wrongs heaped on her innocent young head, was to him an object of demoniac fury.

She sat in the rear of the church, and, covering her face with her hands as Mr. Parris a.s.sailed her father and herself, the tears silently trickled through her small fingers. Goody Nurse, who sat near the child, bent over and whispered some encouraging words in her ear.

"Verily, the Devil's own will be the Devil's own!" declared the pastor, his eyes flashing with fury. "When one of Satan's imps hath been wounded by a shaft of truth, shot from the bow of G.o.d, the angels of darkness, verily, will hover over the suffering devil, and seek to undo what G.o.d hath done." He called on those suffering from the familiar spirits to behold one even now willing to soothe the offspring of a wicked player.

When Cora left the church that day, she asked Mrs. Stevens why Mr.

Parris hated her and said such hard things about her. "Surely I never did him harm, and why doth he a.s.sail me so cruelly?"

Mrs. Stevens strove to comfort the wounded feelings of the child, by a.s.suring Cora that it was the mistaken zeal of the minister, who, but for the scales of prejudice covering his eyes, would by no means be so cruel with her.

"Oh, would that father would return and take me from this place!" sobbed Cora.

"Cora, are you tired of me? Have I not been kind to you?"

"Yes, you have, and I thank you for all your goodness."

"Are you not happy with me?"

"Yes, I could be very happy, did not Mr. Parris say such vile things of my father and myself. Do you think me one of Satan's imps?"

"No, no, sweet child; you are one of G.o.d's angels."

"But I am the child of a player, and he said none such could enter into the kingdom of the Lord."

"That is but a display of his prejudice and ignorance, Cora. I have read the good book from beginning to end, and nowhere do I see anything in G.o.d's Holy Bible that excludes even the player from entering into eternal rest."

"But he, the interpreter of G.o.d's word, says we are doomed."

"He says more than is narrated in the Book of Life. If the ministers would only keep constantly in their minds these words: 'For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things, G.o.d shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book,' then there would be less misconstructions put upon the Bible. Men would be more careful not to accuse their brother, while the beam was in their own eye. Why, Cora, you are but a child, and Christ said: 'Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven.' Now, instead of following the holy precept of the Master, whom he feigns to serve, he declares you an imp of darkness. His zeal hath made him mad.

Where is your father?"

"Alas, I know not."

"When will he return?"

"I know not."

"What are his plans?"

"I am wholly ignorant of them."

Next day Charles Stevens was wandering through the forest near the spring where he rescued the wounded stranger some years before. Often had he thought of that melancholy man and the strange resemblance he bore to Cora's father.

"Where is he now, and what has been his fate?" he thought, as he strolled toward the spring. Suddenly he paused and looked toward the brooklet. Well might he be startled. The negro servants, John and t.i.tuba, were engaged in some of their diabolical incantations in the stream. Kneeling by the water's side, each bent until their foreheads touched the water, then, starting up, they murmured strange fetich words in their diabolical African tongue. John had a whip in his hand, with which he lashed the water furiously, and uttered his eldritch shrieks.

Charles paused, spell-bound, hardly knowing what to make of the strange conduct of the negroes, and wishing he could lay the whip about their own bare shoulders.

During a lull in their performance, he heard a rapid tread of feet coming toward the spring, and beheld his mother, followed by Cora. No sooner did the negroes see them, than they left off lashing the water with their whips and, with the most wild, unearthly screams, bounded from the spot and ran off into the woods.

Mrs. Stevens and Cora both screamed, and were about to fly, when Charles emerged from his place of concealment, saying:

"Don't run away, I am here."

"Charles! Charles! what were they doing?" Mrs. Stevens asked.

"It was some of their wild incantations," he answered. "The knaves deserve to have a good whip laid about their bare backs."

"Truly, they do. Why did they fly at our approach?" asked Mrs. Stevens.

"Perhaps the foolish creatures thought their spell was broken," Charles answered.

"I am so affrighted," said Cora, shuddering. She was growing dizzy, and Mrs. Stevens said:

"Catch her, or she will fall."

He bore her to the spring and, kneeling by the brook, bathed the fair white brow, until she opened her eyes and murmured:

"Mother!"

Many times afterward, both mother and son, recalling the incident, wondered why she, for the first time, had called for her mother. At all other times and on all other occasions, the maid persistently denied that she knew aught of her mother.

A few days later, her father, who had mysteriously and unceremoniously disappeared, returned. No one asked any questions as to where he had been, or what business had engaged his attention. He gave the widow some golden guineas for her care of his child. That night Charles came accidentally upon the father and daughter in the garden. They were sitting in a green bower, partially screened from view, so he approached to within a few paces without being seen.

"Father, have you heard anything more?" she asked.

"No."

"Nor have you seen any one from there?"

"I have not."

"Do you suppose danger is over?"