But the preacher
only announced that before handing the case to the civil court of oyer
and terminer for judgment, the elders wished to hold it in meditation
for another day.

The singing of the dismissal psalm began and a smothered cry seemed to
break from Rebecca's pew. Then the preacher had raised his hands above
bowed heads. The service was over. The people crowded solemnly out,
and I was left alone in the gathering darkness--alone with the ghosts
of youth's illusions mocking from the gloom. Religion, then, did not
always mean right! There were tyrants of souls as well as tyrants of
sword. Prayers were uttered that were fitter for hearing in hell than
in Heaven. Good men could deceive themselves into crime cloaking
spiritual malice, sect jealousy, race hatred with an unctuous text.
Here, in New England, where men had come for freedom, was tyranny
masking in the guise of religion. Preachers as jealous of the power
slipping from their hands as ever was primate of England! A poor
gentleman hounded to his death because he practised the sciences!
Millions of victims all the world over burned for witchcraft,
sacrificed to a Moloch of superstition in the name of a Christ who came
to let in the light of knowledge on all superstition!

Could I have found a wilderness where was no human face, I think I had
fled to it that night. And, indeed, when you come to think of my
breaking with Eli Kirke, 'twas the witch trial that drove me to the
wilderness.

There was yet a respite. But the Church still dominated the civil
courts, and a transfer of the case meant that the Church would throw
the onus of executing sentence on those lay figures who were the
puppets of a Pharisaical oligarchy.

There was no time to appeal to England. There was no chance of sudden
rescue. New England had not the stuff of which mobs are made.

I thought of appealing to the mercy of the judges; but what mercy had
Eli Kirke received at the hands of royalists that he should be merciful
to them?

I thought of firing the prison; but the walls were stone, and the night
wet, and the outcome doubtful.

I thought of the cell window; but if there had been any hope that way,
M. Picot had worked an escape.

Bowing my head to think--to pray--to imprecate, I lost all sense of
time and place. Some one had slipped quietly into the dark of the
church. I felt rather than saw a nearing presence. But I paid no
heed, for despair blotted out all thoug