Long and fervently he prayed. Meanwhile, Sir Jonathan sauntered up and down the corridor, swinging his blackthorn stick lightly, humming his Old World tune. Every time he passed the open door, he cast a terrible glance at Deliverance over the minister’s kneeling figure, so that she shuddered, feeling she was indeed besieged by the powers of darkness on one hand, and an angel of light on the other. Cotton Mather could not see those terrible glances, but even as he prayed, he was conscious of Sir Jonathan’s unconcerned humming and light step. This implied some disrespect, so that it was with displeasure he called upon him to return. “I cannot understand, Sir Jonathan,” he remarked, rising and resuming his seat, “how it is that you who are so godly a man, should exercise a spell to hold this witch-maid from prayer.” Sir Jonathan shrugged his shoulders. “She has a spectre which would do me evil. ’Tis a plot of the Devil’s to put reproach on me, in that I have refused to do his bidding.” An expression of low cunning came into his glance. “Have not you had similar experience, Mr. Mather? Methinks I have heard that the tormentors of an afflicted young woman did cause your very image to appear before her.” “Yea,” rejoined Mr. Mather with some heat, “the fiends did make themselves masters of her tongue, so in her fits she did complain I put upon her preternatural torments. Yet her only outcries when she recovered her senses were for my poor prayers. At last my exhortations did prevail, and she, as well as my good name, was delivered from the malice of Satan.” Sir Jonathan stooped to flick some dust off his buckled shoe with his kerchief. “One knows not on whom the accusation of witchery may fasten. Even the most godly be not spared some slander.” Now when he stooped, Deliverance thought she had seen a smile flicker over his face, but when he lifted his head, his expression was deeply grave. He met the young minister’s suspicious and uncomfortable glance serenely. “What most convinces me,” he continued easily, “of the prisoner’s guilt, e’en more than the affliction she put upon me, is the old yeoman’s testimony that he saw her conversing in the woods with Satan. Could we but get to the root of that matter, perchance the whole secret may be revealed. But I would humbly suggest she tell it in my ear, alone, lest the tale prove of too terrible and scandalous a nature to reach thy pious ear. Then I would repeat it to you with becoming delicacy.” “Nay,” answered Cotton Mather, “a delicate stomach deters me not from investing aught that may result to the better establishment of the Lord in this district.”