s morning, and turned my arm black and blue.' And she
bared her arm, as if in confirmation of her words. It was sorely
bruised.

'I was not near you, Prudence!' said Lois, sadly. But that was only
reckoned fresh evidence of her diabolical power.

Lois's brain began to get bewildered. Witch Lois! she a witch, abhorred
of all men! Yet she would try to think, and make one more effort.

'Aunt Hickson,' she said, and Grace came forwards--'am I a witch, Aunt
Hickson?' she asked; for her aunt, stern, harsh, unloving as she might
be, was truth itself, and Lois thought--so near to delirium had she
come--if her aunt condemned her, it was possible she might indeed be a
witch.

Grace Hickson faced her unwillingly.

'It is a stain upon our family for ever,' was the thought in her mind.

'It is for God to judge whether thou art a witch, or not. Not for me.'

'Alas, alas!' moaned Lois; for she had looked at Faith, and learnt that
no good word was to be expected from her gloomy face and averted eyes.
The meeting-house was full of eager voices, repressed, out of reverence
for the place, into tones of earnest murmuring that seemed to fill the
air with gathering sounds of anger, and those who had at first fallen
back from the place where Lois stood were now pressing forwards and
round about her, ready to seize the young friendless girl, and bear her
off to prison. Those who might have been, who ought to have been, her
friends, were either averse or indifferent to her; though only Prudence
made any open outcry upon her. That evil child cried out perpetually
that Lois had cast a devilish spell upon her, and bade them keep the
witch away from her; and, indeed, Prudence was strangely convulsed when
once or twice Lois's perplexed and wistful eyes were turned in her
direction. Here and there girls, women uttering strange cries, and
apparently suffering from the same kind of convulsive fit as that which
had attacked Prudence, were centres of a group of agitated friends, who
muttered much and savagely of witchcraft, and the list which had been
taken down only the night before from Hota's own lips. They demanded to
have it made public, and objected to the slow forms of the law. Others,
not so much or so immediately interested in the sufferers, were
kneeling around, and praying aloud for themselves and their own safety,
until the excitement should be so much quelled as to enable Dr. Cotton
Mather to be again heard in prayer and exhortation.