The Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Megapack. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

      “’Tis but a moment since you were afraid,” said Joseph. “Have you no fear now?” His blue eyes looked sharply into hers.

      She looked back at him soberly and innocently. “In truth, I feel no such fear as I did,” she answered. “If I mistake not, your bold front and your prayers drove away the evil ones. I will say a psalm as I go, and I trow naught will harm me.”

      Ann slipped lightly down from the pillion, and pulled off her one remaining shoe and her stockings; they were her fine worked silk ones, and she could not walk in them over the rough road. Then she set forth very slowly, peering here and there in the undergrowth beside the road, until she passed the curve and the reach of her husband’s eyes. Then she gathered up her crimson taffeta petticoat and ran like a deer, with long, graceful leaps, looking neither to right nor left, straight back to the Proctor house.

      In the door of the house stood a tiny girl with a soft shock of yellow hair. She wore a little straight blue gown, and her baby feet were bare, curling over the sunny door-step. When she saw Ann coming she started as if to run; then she stood still, her soft eyes wary, her mouth quivering.

      Ann Bayley ran up quickly, and threw her arms around her, kneeling down on the step.

      What is your name, little maid?” said she, in a loving, agitated voice.

      “Abigail Proctor,” replied the little maid, shyly, in her sweet childish treble. Then she tried to free herself, but Ann held her fast.

      “Nay, be not afraid, sweet,” said she. “I love you. I once had a little maid like you for my own. Tell me, dear heart, are you all alone in the house?”

      Then the child fell to crying again, and clung around Ann’s neck.

      “Is there anybody in the house, sweet?” Ann whispered, fondling her, and pressing the wet baby cheek to her own. “The constables came and took them,” sobbed the little maid. “They put my poppet down the well, and they pulled mother and Sarah down the road. They took father before that, and Mary Warren did gibe and point. The constables pulled Benjamin away too. I want my mother.”

      “Your mother shall come again,” said Ann. “Take comfort, dear little heart, they cannot have the will to keep her long away. There, there, I tell you she shall come. You watch in the door, and you will see her come down the road.”

      She smoothed back the little maid’s yellow hair, and wiped the tears from her little face with a corner of her beautiful embroidered neckerchief. Then she saw that the face was all grimy with tears and dust, and she went over to the well, which was near the door, and drew a bucket of water swiftly with her strong young arms; then she wet the corner of the neckerchief and scrubbed the little maid’s face, bidding her shut her eyes. Then she kissed her over and over.

      “Now you are sweet and clean,” said she. “Dear little heart, I have some sugar cakes in my bag for you, and then I must be gone.”

      The little maid looked at her eagerly, her cheeks were waxen, and the blue veins showed in her full childish forehead. Ann pulled some little cakes out of a red velvet satchel she wore at her waist, and Abigail reached out for one with a hungry cry. The tears sprang to Ann’s eyes; she put the rest of the cakes in a little pile on the door-stone, and watched the child eat. Then she gathered her up in her arms.

      “Good-bye, sweetheart,” she said, kissing the soft trembling mouth, the sweet hollow under the chin, and the clinging hands. “Before long I shall come this way again, and do you stand in the door when I go past.”

      She put her down and hastened away, but little Abigail ran after her. Ann stopped and knelt and fondled her again.

      “Go back, deary,” she pleaded; “go back, and eat the sugar cakes.”

      But this beautiful kind vision in the crimson taffeta, with the rosy cheeks and sweet black eyes looking out from the French hood, with the gleam of gold and delicate embroidery between the silken folds of her mantilla, with the ways like her mother’s, was more to little deserted Abigail Proctor than the sugar cakes, although she was sorely hungry for them. She stood aloof with pitiful determined eyes until Ann’s back was turned, then, as she followed, Ann looked around and saw her and caught her up again.

      “My dear heart, my dear heart,” she said, and she was half sobbing, “now must you go back, else I fear harm will come to you. My goodman is waiting for me yonder, and I know not what lie will do or say. Nay; you must go buck. I would I could keep you, my little Abigail, but you must go back.” Ann Bayley put the little maid down and gave her a gentle push. “Go back,” she said, smiling, with her eyes full of tears; “go back, and eat the sugar cakes.”

      Then she sped on swiftly; as she neared the curve in the road she thrust a band in her pocket, and drew forth a dainty shoe with dangling lacings of crimson silk. She glanced around with a smile and a backward wave of her hand the glowing crimson of her petticoat showed for a minute through the green mist of the undergrowth; then she disappeared.

      The little maid Abigail stood still in the road, gazing after her, her soft pink mouth open, her hands clutching at her blue petticoat, as if she would thus hold herself back from following. She heard the tramp of a horse’s feet beyond the curve; then it died away. She turned about and went back to the house, with the tears rolling over her cheeks; but she did not sob aloud, as she would have done had her mother been near to hear. A pitiful conviction of the hopelessness of all the appeals of grief was stealing over her childish mind. She had been alone in the house three nights and two days, ever since her sister Sarah and her brother Benjamin had been arrested for witchcraft and carried to jail. Long before that her parents, John and Elizabeth Proctor, had disappeared down the Boston road in charge of the constables. None of the family was spared save this little Abigail, who was deemed too young and insignificant to have dealings with Satan, and was therefore not thrown into prison, but was left alone in the desolate Proctor house in the midst of woods said to be full of evil spirits and witches, to die of fright or starvation as she might. There was but little mercy shown the families of those accused of witchcraft.

      “Let some of Goody Proctor’s familiars minister unto the brat,” one of the constables had said, with a stern laugh, when Abigail had followed wailing after her brother and sister on the day of their arrest.

      “Yea,” said another; “she can send her yellow-bird or her black hog to keep her company. I wot her tears will be soon dried.”

      Then the stoutly tramping horses had borne out of sight and bearing the mocking faces of the constables; Sarah’s fair agonized one turned backward towards her little deserted sister, and Benjamin raised a brave youthful clamor of indignation.

      “Let us loose!”’ Abigail heard him shout; “let us loose, I tell ye! Ye are fools, rather than we are witches; ye are fools and murderers! Let us loose, I tell ye!”

      Abigail waited long, thinking her brother’s words would prevail; but neither he nor Sarah returned, and the sounds all died away, and she went back to the house sobbing. The damp spring night was settling down in a palpable mist, and the woods seemed full of voices. The little maid had heard enough of the terrible talk of the day to fill her innocent head with vague superstitious horror. She threw her apron over her head and fled blindly through the woods, and now and then she fell down and bruised herself, and rose up lamenting sorely, with nobody to hear her.

      As soon as she was in the house she shut the doors, and barred them with the great bars that had been made as protection against Indians, and now might wax useless against worse than savages, according to the belief of the colony.

      All night long the little maid shrieked and sobbed, and called on her father and her mother and her sister and her brother. Men faring in the road betwixt Boston and Salem village heard her with horror, and fled past with psalm and prayer, their blood cold in their veins. They related the next day to the raging, terror-stricken people how at midnight the accursed Proctor house was full of flitting infernal lights, and howling with devilish spirits, and added a death-dealing tale of some godly woman of the village who outrode their horses on a broomstick and disappeared in the Proctor house.

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