Alisoun stepped bravely up and stood beside her mother. The dense crowd below seemed to her to number a thousand thousand instead of only the few hundred that they were. Her breath caught in her throat and her tongue was dry, so that the first words she tried to speak would make no sound. Did it bring help or only an added pang of shame that she saw, at that moment, Gilbert Sheffield come through the narrow street and look up at her amazedly from the edge of the throng? He had hastened from the wharf and had arrived just in time to hear her confession. For a minute it seemed that her cup of humiliation had overflowed and that she could never speak. Then one look into his honest brown eyes steadied her as nothing else could have done; his presence gave her courage, although it deepened the crimson of her cheeks. Mother Garford, looking down in trembling fear, spoke out for the first time. “Oh, Mistress Alisoun, sweet Mistress Alisoun,” she cried; “tell the truth and save me if you can.” Alisoun climbed a step higher and took the old woman’s shaking hand in hers. “Yes,” she said, able to speak clearly at last, “the truth will save you and it is the truth that I am going to tell.” Master Mather bent upon her a threatening, scowling countenance. “What had she to do with the accused witch?” he wished to know. She had bought a charm, a love charm, Alisoun told him. After the first plunge it seemed not hard at all to speak out. “And had she been alone when she bought it? Where was the charm now? Had it had effect?” “There was one with me whose name I cannot tell,” Alisoun answered. “Nor do I know where the charm is now. In my belief it had no atom of magic power nor any effect.” “Have you or that other become engaged to wed since receiving it?” Master Mather pursued relentlessly. “Yes, the other has plighted her troth and is soon to be married,” Alisoun was forced to admit. “And the charm,” he insisted, “you say you know not where it is?” “No,” said Alisoun, “it is gone.” “See you not, good people,” he cried, turning triumphantly to the crowd. “The talisman has done its work and then has vanished, yet the maid claims there is no witchcraft here. Surely she is bewitched herself or else is in league with the accused woman and her sorcery.” “No, no,” exclaimed Alisoun, all trace of her terror gone, “you shall hear my story before you judge. I went to Mother Garford, whom people call the Wise Woman, to buy a love charm, that much is true. It was folly I know, and I blush for it, but maids in this village have done the same thing for many and many a year before this. The charm that Mother Garford gave us, a little, round, white stone, she said had no power alone, but must be joined with neat, well-ordered ways, with cheerful faces and clean, shining houses to give it any potency.” The women in the crowd looked at each other. This sounded, surely, more like ordinary common sense than like witchcraft.