Perhaps it was part of his punishment that from that hour Sir Jonathan was never free from dread. He, who originally had no faith in witchcraft and secretly laughed at it, although he falsely testified to his belief in it, was doomed, henceforth, to start at his own shadow, to cower in bed, to ever after keep a night-light burning. He hurried along in the silver moonlight which fell whitely on the pebbled street, a solitary black figure with flapping cape and steeple-hat. Suddenly, he drew back with a shrill cry, startled by his own shadow flung ahead of him as he turned a corner. So, cowering and starting, he reached his room and crept into his bed, there to fall into an uneasy slumber, which the taper’s pale flame was as ineffectual to calm as the light of truth to reach his darkened heart. Meanwhile, an indignant kitten stood gasping and sneezing, nearly choked by the straw under which it had lain. Ah! how its little mistress held it to her breast and soothed it and kissed it, weeping for thanksgiving that she had been spared a visit from Sir Jonathan. There were hours, however, in the long unhappy night, when not even the kitten nestled in her arms could comfort Deliverance,—hours when all the bright days of her life came trooping through her fancy, to be realized no more. Never again would she be filled with joy that the fruit trees blew sweet in blossom, that the violets budded in the long grass in the orchard, that she and Abigail had found a bird’s nest holding four blue eggs, or had happened upon a patch of strawberries. There were other times which would not return,—the moonlit winter nights, fairer than the days, when she and Goodwife Higgins went to husking-bees and quilting parties. Not for her would there be a red ear found amidst the corn. Still sadder were her thoughts of her father, missing her help with the herbs, blundering in his helpless fashion over the task that had once been hers. Goodwife Higgins would have no one left now to mind her of the little daughter that had died so long ago of the smallpox. And there was one other whom she had not seen for many months. “Oh, Ronald!” she whispered, “my heart be full o’ grief that ye could not come to me.” After a weary while she fell into a deep sleep from which she was wakened by the jailer. For the first time he spoke to her harshly, roughly bidding her rise and prepare for death. He pushed the bowl containing her breakfast inside the threshold with his foot, fearing to enter the cell. So hurried was his glance that it failed to take in Thomas, snuggled up warmly in the depression in the straw, made where Deliverance had slept. Sadly the little maid dressed herself and braided her hair. She ate a little of the mush and milk, but she fed most of it to Thomas. “Thomas,” she said, tipping the bowl conveniently for him, “my own dear Thomas, I hope ye will not forget me. Ye can go home again, Thomas, but I shall never see my home again.”