The evidence for the prosecution was here exhausted, and Barbara had nothing to offer in her defence. A judge, more compassionate than his brethren, asked the prisoner if she had no counsel.

Barbara looked up at this question, smiled faintly, and shook her head.

"Wherefore should I seek counsel?" she said. "I have no friends, and those who bear witness of my innocence injure me most. What could eloquence or wisdom do in behalf of a creature so forsaken?"

"No, not forsaken—do not say that. One friend is ready to stand by you," whispered a voice in her ear, and looking suddenly around she saw Norman Lovel, with all the fire of a generous nature in his face, ready to die at her feet, or in her defence, despite his patron—despite all the judges on earth.

A beautiful joy broke over Barbara Stafford's face; the loneliness of desolation was no longer around her. But other eyes were bent on Norman Lovel, and when Barbara smiled, the frown upon that dark forehead gloomed like midnight.

"The prisoner refuses counsel," said the judge. "Let the trial proceed."

"Not so," cried a clear voice, that rang over the crowd with singular distinctness. "The lady has counsel. I, an admitted advocate in the English courts, as these credentials testify, stand here in her defence."

Barbara Stafford started at the sound of that voice. It was the son of King Philip, who had flung himself in the midst of his most deadly enemies to rescue her from death. Norman Lovel started forward and took his place by the young man, whom he saw for the first time, and toward whom his heart leaped in quick sympathy.

The judges consulted together. The case was a singular one, and they were not altogether certain about admitting a stranger into the provincial courts without due question. But the credentials which the young man submitted were genuine, and after a little he was escorted with considerable show of dignity to a place before the judges. Though armed with the impulses of a giant, and a kind of eloquence that might have kindled enthusiasm in any heart not locked close by superstition, which is the romance of bigotry, he might as well have argued with the rocks on the hills, as attempted that woman's defence before a bigoted jury, and those iron-hearted judges. What argument could he use which would not wound the self-love of those solemn men? how could he arouse sympathies which they repudiated as a sin, or appeal to the judgment which was bound down by prejudices, reverenced as solemn allegations?

At first his voice was husky and faint; the very might of his sympathy for the woman who sat gazing on him so piteously paralyzed his powers; but indignation at last broke the trammels from his speech, and with a loud, clear utterance, he entered upon her defence.

Had not both judges and jury been blind with bigotry and solemn self-conceit, his first argument must have enforced the prisoner's acquittal. With the might of a powerful intellect he unravelled the tissue of evidence, and exhibited the case as it would appear this day. "The evil," he said, "lay not in the gentle lady arraigned before them, but in the disturbed minds of the witnesses: Samuel Parris was a man of books, of meditation, and thought—a poet, diseased by the unwritten music in his soul, which had no power to express itself in long sermons, and to which all other avenues to sympathy were closed up. It was this that had drawn him into the storm, and had sent him to battling the waves face to face with death on the coast. It was this that made love for his child idolatry, from which he was compelled by a sensitive conscience to fast and pray, as from a grievous sin.

"Samuel Parris, the principal witness, was neither insincere nor insane, but a man born in advance of the age, to whom endowments, that would have been greatness if understood even by himself, were turned into a torment and a curse. This quick imagination, this sensitive love, had seized upon the old man's reason, and thus rendered him a most dread witness—a thousand times more dangerous than falsehood or malice could have been, because of his honesty." The other witnesses he touched on lightly and with gentleness, but when he left them and threw his fiery soul into a protest and appeal for the prisoner, the passion of his eloquence was enough to stir even that crowd of prejudging accusers.

Why had Barbara Stafford done these strange things? How, except from the Prince of Darkness, had she attained the power of winning every soul that came in contact with hers into subjection? Why was she possessed of a beauty which died with the first youth of most women—a fresh, proud beauty, to which years only gave grandeur, except that she had made a compact with the evil one, and given her soul in exchange for the marvellous beauty in which her diabolical power principally lay? How could he, or any man, answer charges like these—charges based on imagination only, yet for which a fellow-creature was in jeopardy of her life?

How should he answer? Let the judge and the jury look upon the woman where she sat, with halberts bristling around her, and a tribunal of death that moment waiting to hurl her into eternity; for, guard the dignity of that court as they might, such was its object. See how gently she watches these proceedings—see how brave she is. Though a woman upon the brink of eternity, rich in beauty, and strong with life, she is not afraid to die. Was that the attitude of a fiend? Was that troubled smile, so full of forgiveness and pity, the smile of a devil or an angel? Let the jury look upon that face, and answer to the most high God if they refused to profit by the evidence beaming therein!

Here the men of the jury looked at Barbara Stafford with a single accord, as if they had no power to resist the direction of the young advocate's eye, and it seemed impossible to turn from her gaze, so mournful was the gloom of those large eyes, so calm was the attitude with which she met their scrutiny.

But here one of the judges arose, and warned the jury, that a glance like that was the most dangerous fascination that Satan gave to his witch children, and besought them to look straight toward the bench, thus saving their souls from jeopardy.

Then the wonderful eloquence of the young man was aroused, his magnificent eyes shot fire, his lip curved, and his thin nostrils dilated; all the strength and fervor of his being was flung into the scathing denunciation which he hurled against the court, and against the people whom this tribunal represented. It was the wild eloquence of despair, for he knew when the jury turned to look upon Winthrop, the chief judge, whose rebuke had crushed the rising pity which might have saved Barbara Stafford, that her doom was sealed. Thus, with the terrible conviction that he was avenging the fate of a doomed woman rather than pleading with a hope, he poured out a wild outburst of passionate eloquence—now appeal—now denunciation—now a wailing lament, that made the jury tremble, and the judges turn white in the face, as if an avenging angel had descended to protect the woman they were about to adjudge to death.

This eloquence, native to the Indian, overbore the restraint of education, and as the wild torrent of feeling rushed over the multitude, it fired the superstition, brooding there, into a terrible conviction. A word only was wanting, like a lighted match, to ignite these lurid apprehensions. It came from a far-off corner of the meeting-house, where one of the witnesses stood aghast with wonder, and trembling in all his massive limbs.

"It is the man who came with us in the hold of the vessel. He followed her after the storm. He it was who left the heavy boxes in my keeping."

A shrewd bystander caught these words as they fell from the white lips of Jason Brown, and he cried out in a voice that rang through the court like a trumpet,

"Behold the confederate of her sorcery! The beautiful witch has brought Lucifer himself to plead her cause: mark the fire in his eyes, the breath from his nostrils; see the bronze on his forehead, the proud curve on his mouth!"

At these words there rose a tumult in the house. Women shrieked, and pressed forward to the doors; men broke into wild murmurs, or whispered together in low voices; while the judges stood up, pale as a group of statues; and the jury huddled together, looking into each other's faces aghast.

In the midst of this turmoil, Barbara Stafford felt a breath on her cheek, and looking suddenly up, met the glance of those eyes, which, a moment before, had frightened the people with their burning passion, now full of determined purpose.

He whispered something, but in the tumultuous noise Barbara lost its meaning. The next instant the rush of the crowd carried the noble youth from her sight, and when the court, recovering from its panic, looked around for this emissary of the dark one, who had denounced its proceedings face to face with the august judges, the strange advocate was gone.

Then, while the crowd was hushed with unconquerable awe, and the very heavens bent over it black with a mustering storm, the verdict of the jury ran in a low whisper from lip to lip, till it reached the savages brooding in the forest, and was mingled with the deep, deep curses of the white man—

"Guilty! guilty!"

Then the storm burst over them, shaking the window-panes, like angry fiends, uphurling great trees in the woods, and plowing up the virgin soil; and in the midst of its fury sentence was pronounced.

On the second day from that Barbara Stafford was doomed to suffer death by drowning for the crime of witchcraft.