The trial was one which filled the community with a certain sense of awe. It was no old woman, brought up in their midst, whose very ignorance could be urged in judgment against her; but a brave, beautiful lady, full of life, and bright with intellect, whose very presence as she walked up those aisles, with a forest of halberts bristling around her, made the proudest of her judges hold his breath. The prisoner sat down upon a bench placed near the pulpit, within sight of the communion-table which was surrounded by her judges, for whom a platform had been built, lifting them in sight of the people. She was very pale, and her eyes had a mournful look inexpressibly touching, but there was neither timidity nor unconcern in her appearance; she seemed quiet as a lamb, but weary unto death, like one who had been driven a long way, and through rough places, to be slaughtered at last. The meeting-house was crowded. The square pews, the galleries and staircases, groaned under a weight of human life. Men crowded upon each other, like hounds on the scent, only to obtain a glimpse of the beautiful witch, or to catch a tone of her voice. Like sportsmen who had brought down a splendid bird in their search after common game, the rabble gloried in the queenliness and grace of its victim. The public had become tired of hanging withered old crones on the witch-gallows, and wanted exactly a creature like that, to give piquancy and zest to their terrible hunt after human life. Inside and out, the meeting-house was beset with a breathless throng. The windows were open, though the air was sharp and full of frost, that the curious crowd, which trampled down the snow without, might get a glimpse of that pale face. The forest, out of whose bosom the city of Boston had been cut, swept down close to the building, and the crowd extended into its margin. It was observed that a few Indians mingled with the people in this direction, and that others were occasionally seen moving among the naked trees farther up the woods, where a hemlock hollow broke off the view. When the trial commenced, and the prosecuting attorney was about to open his case, drawing all eyes to the meeting-house and the proceedings within, a train of savages came gliding out of these hemlock shadows, and mingling imperceptibly with the crowd, through which they moved like a brook stirring the long grass of a meadow. It was a common thing for friendly Indians to mix in such crowds, and no one observed that a sort of military precision marked the movement of these seemingly friendly savages, even while penetrating the multitude, and that they dropped into line, after entering the meeting-house, forming a cordon from the platform, on which the judges sat, to the front entrance doors.