Up to this moment the girl had moaned and writhed as with overwhelming pain, but as the hands of Barbara Stafford fell upon her forehead and rested there, the tension left her nerves, and with a sigh she sank back in the chair. Barbara smiled, passing her hands softly down the now pale cheek, till they rested for a moment on the muslin that covered Elizabeth's bosom. She again lifted them to the drooping forehead, and let them glide to the bosom again, leaving quiet with each gentle touch. At last Elizabeth Parris turned her head drowsily, and the lids fell over her eyes like white rose-leaves folding themselves to sleep, and with what seemed a blissful shudder, she resigned herself to perfect rest. Then Barbara looked at her accusers with a sad smile, and took her seat by the window, little dreaming that the holy impulses of pity that had just soothed the pain of a fellow-creature would be the most fatal evidence offered at her trial. "Take her away--take the woman hence!" cried the magistrate, rising up, hardened in all his iron nature. "The devil, her master, has for once betrayed her into what might seem an angel's work, but it proves more than an angel's power--away with her!" In his supreme ignorance, this magistrate of the seventeenth century followed the example of the rabble that hunted our Saviour to death. Surely the world had progressed but slowly in its soul knowledge since that awful day of the crucifixion. While Elizabeth Parris lay sleeping sweetly in her chair--it was the first slumber she had known in three days--Barbara Stafford was bound again with those ignominious thongs and taken from the room. Samuel Parris watched the movements with a thrill of compassion: grateful for the rest that had been given to his child, he could not see those white hands bound so rudely without a thrill of pity. But the people without obtained intelligence of what had been passing, and the words sacrilegious and blasphemy ran from lip to lip. "What," said one, "does the witch mock the holy miracles of our Saviour, and attempt to heal with the laying on of hands? Dares she to brave God in the very presence of our most worshipful magistrate, and that gray-haired Christian, Samuel Parris? Why should we wait for a trial? is not this evidence enough? Let us take her down to the sea and cast her into the deep." "Let us hang her at the town post," cried another. "The sea has vomited her up once; it is no use trying that." Then other voices set in, and the tumult became general. The throng gathered closer and closer around the minister's house; the women most eager, and crying out loudest that the witch should be given up to them.