In the rear of
the procession rode a figure on horseback, so darkly conspicuous, so
sternly triumphant, that my hearers mistook him for the visible presence
of the fiend himself; but it was only his good friend, Cotton Mather,
proud of his well-won dignity, as the representative of all the hateful
features of his time: the one blood-thirsty man, in whom were
concentrated those vices of spirit and errors of opinion that sufficed to
madden the whole surrounding multitude. And thus I marshalled them
onward, the innocent who were to die, and the guilty who were to grow old
in long remorse--tracing their every step, by rock, and shrub, and broken
track, till their shadowy visages had circled round the hilltop, where we
stood. I plunged into my imagination for a blacker horror, and a deeper
woe, and pictured the scaffold----
But here my companions seized an arm on each side; their nerves were
trembling; and, sweeter victory still, I had reached the seldom trodden
places of their hearts, and found the well-spring of their tears. And
now the past had done all it could. We slowly descended, watching the
lights as they twinkled gradually through the town, and listening to the
distant mirth of boys at play, and to the voice of a young girl warbling
somewhere in the dusk, a pleasant sound to wanderers from old witch
times.
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