Deliverance began to feel that her secret would be torn from her against her will. Alas, what means of self-defence remained to her! Her fingers closed convulsively upon the unfinished stocking in her lap. The feminine instinct to seek relief from painful thought by some simple occupation of sewing or knitting, awakened in her. She resolved to continue her knitting, counting each stitch to herself, never permitting her attention to swerve from the task, no matter what words were addressed to her. So in her great simplicity, and innocent of all worldly conventionalities, she sought security in her knitting. This action was so unprecedented, it suggested such quiet domesticity and the means by which good women righteously busied themselves, that both priest and layman were disconcerted, and knew not what to do. Suddenly Sir Jonathan laughed harshly. “The witch has a spice of her Master’s obstinacy,” he cried. “Methinks ’twere right good wisdom, since your prayers and exhortations avail not with her, to try less gentle means and use threats,” his crafty mind catching at the fact that whatever strange, but, he feared to him, familiar tale, the little maid might tell, it could be misconstrued as the malice of one who had given herself over to Satan. “Perchance ’twould be as well,” assented Cotton Mather, greatly perplexed. Sir Jonathan shook his forefinger at Deliverance. “Listen, mistress,” said he, and sought to fix her with his menacing eye. Deliverance, counting her stitches, heeded him not. How pale her little face! How quick the glancing needles flashed! And ever back of her counting ran an undercurrent of thought, the words of her dream,—A little life sweetly lived. “This would I threaten you,” spoke Sir Jonathan. “You have heard how old Giles Corey is to be put to death?” The knitting-needles trembled in the small hands. Now she dropped a stitch, and now another stitch. “And because he will say neither that he is guilty, nor yet that he is not guilty, it is rumoured that he is to be pressed to death beneath stones,” continued Sir Jonathan. A sigh of horror followed his words. The involuntary sound came from Cotton Mather, whose imaginative, highly-strung organism responded to the least touch. His eyes were fixed upon the little maid. He saw the small hands shaking so that they could not guide the needles. How small those hands, how stamped with the innocent seeming of childhood! Oh, that the Devil should take upon himself such a disguise! “And so, if you do not confess,” spoke Sir Jonathan’s cold, menacing voice, “you shall not be accorded even the mercy of being hanged, but tied hands and feet, and laid upon the ground. And the villagers shall come and heap stones on you, and I, whom you have afflicted, shall count them as they fall. I shall watch the first stone strike you—”