Samuel Parris kept his word faithfully; for added to his own promise was the sacramental oath taken by Barbara Stafford, which he dared not force her to break. But the secret confided to him lay heavily on his conscience, and the struggle there wore away his strength. For a whole year he avoided his old friend the governor, and refused to visit his house, even when Elizabeth became its permanent inmate as Norman Lovel's wife. But at last there came a period when the old man went mournfully to the house he had shunned. This time, he was summoned there to attend, not a wedding, but a funeral--Lady Phipps had laid down a life all sunshine, and gone suddenly into the valley and shadow of death. When Samuel Parris rode up to that stately mansion, he found its pillars draped with black, and a hatchment over the front entrance. These emblems of grief struck him with singular feelings of blended grief and thankfulness. His eyes filled with tears of regret for the gentle woman who had gone; but his heart beat free once more, and a grievous load fell from it, when his foot passed that threshold. In an hour after his arrival at the mansion, a funeral cortege went forth from its portals which surpassed any thing known to the colony in its exceeding solemnity and worldly grandeur. In the procession, Samuel Parris rode with his friend; and, for the first time since Barbara Stafford's escape, the two men sat hand in hand, yielding to the old sympathy, and united by the old love. Both mourned the dead with sincere grief; but it was observed of Samuel Parris, that a gentle hopefulness had settled on his face, and there was something in his voice, when he prayed, that thrilled the hearer with strange accents of thanksgiving. When the coffin, palled with black velvet, and rich with silver, was placed before the altar where William Phipps had partaken of his first sacrament, Parris knelt beside it, in violation of all usage, and prayed, for some moments, silently; but as if he were in absolute communion with the dead. Then he arose, like one reassured, and with benign calmness went through the funeral ceremonies.