ly avoided Lois, that she, humbled and grieved, could not force
her company upon her cousin, but loitered a little behind,--the quiet
tears stealing down her face, shed for the many causes that had
occurred this morning.

The meeting-house was full to suffocation; and, as it sometimes happens
on such occasions, the greatest crowd was close about the doors, from
the fact that few saw, on their first entrance, where there might be
possible spaces into which they could wedge themselves. Yet they were
impatient of any arrivals from the outside, and pushed and hustled
Faith, and after her Lois, till the two were forced on to a conspicuous
place in the very centre of the building, where there was no chance of
a seat, but still space to stand in. Several stood around, the pulpit
being in the middle, and already occupied by two ministers in Geneva
bands and gowns, while other ministers, similarly attired, stood
holding on to it, almost as if they were giving support instead of
receiving it. Grace Hickson and her son sat decorously in their own
pew, thereby showing that they had arrived early from the execution.
You might almost have traced out the number of those who had been at
the hanging of the Indian witch, by the expression of their
countenances. They were awestricken into terrible repose; while the
crowd pouring in, still pouring in, of those who had not attended the
execution, looked all restless, and excited, and fierce. A buzz went
round the meeting, that the stranger minister who stood along with
Pastor Tappau in the pulpit was no other than Dr. Cotton Mather
himself, come all the way from Boston to assist in purging Salem of
witches.

And now Pastor Tappau began his prayer, extempore, as was the custom.
His words were wild and incoherent, as might be expected from a man who
had just been consenting to the bloody death of one who was, but a few
days ago, a member of his own family; violent and passionate, as was to
be looked for in the father of children, whom he believed to suffer so
fearfully from the crime he would denounce before the Lord. He sat down
at length from pure exhaustion. Then Dr. Cotton Mather stood forward:
he did not utter more than a few words of prayer, calm in comparison
with what had gone before, and then he went on to address the great
crowd before him in a quiet, argumentative way, but arranging what he
had to say with something of the same kind of skill which Antony used
in his speech to the