Deliverance raised her head eagerly. A lesser punishment! Then she would not be hanged. Oh, what a blessed salvation that she would be placed only in the stocks, or made to stand in a public place until she should confess! And it flashed through her mind that she could delay her confession from day to day until the Cavalier should return. Cotton Mather caught her sudden changed expression. The wan little face with its wide, uplifted eyes and half parted lips acquired a fearful significance. That transfiguring illumination of hope upon her face was to him the phosphorescent playing of diabolical lights. His compassion vanished. He now saw her only as a subtle instrument of the Devil’s to defeat the ministers and the Church. He shuddered at the train of miserable consequences to which his pity might have opened the door, had not the mercy of God showed him his error in time. “But when you have catched a witch of more than ordinary devilment,” he cried, striking the palm of one hand with his clinched fist, “and who, by a fair and most subtle showing, would betray the cause of Christ to her Master, let no weak pity unnerve you, but have at her and hang her, lest but one such witch left in the land acquire power to wreak untold evil and undo all we have done.” Still once again did his deeply concerned gaze seek the prisoner’s face, hoping to behold therein some sign of softening. Beholding it not he sighed heavily. He would willingly have given his life to save her soul to the good of God and to the glory of his own self-immolation. “I become more and more convinced that my failure to bring this miserable maid to confession, and indeed the whole assault of the Evil Angels upon the country,” he continued, using those words which have been generally accepted as a revelation of his marvellous credulity and self-righteousness, “were intended by Hell as a particular defiance unto my poor endeavours to bring the souls of men unto heaven. Yet will I wage personal war with Satan to drive him from the land.” He raised his eyes, a light of exaltation sweeping over his face. “And in God’s own appointed time,” he cried in a voice that quivered with emotion, “His Peace will again descend upon this fair and gracious land, and we shall be at rest from persecution.” Whatever of overweening vanity his words expressed, none present seeing his enraptured face might have judged him harshly. No infatuated self-complacency alone prompted his words, but rather his earnest conviction that he was indeed the instrument of God, and believed himself by reason of his long fastings and prayer, more than any person he knew, in direct communion with the invisible world. And if his vanity and self-sufficiency held many from loving him, there were few who did not involuntarily do him honour.