In the rear of the procession rode a figure on
horseback, so darkly conspicuous, so sternly triumphant, that my
hearers mistook him for the visible presence of the fiend himself;
but it was only his good friend, Cotton Mather, proud of his well-won
dignity, as the representative of all the hateful features of his
time; the one blood-thirsty man, in whom were concentrated those
vices of spirit and errors of opinion that sufficed to madden the
whole surrounding multitude. And thus I marshalled them onward, the
innocent who were to die, and the guilty who were to grow old in long
remorse- tracing their every step, by rock, and shrub, and broken
track, till their shadowy visages had circled round the hill-top,
where we stood. I plunged into my imagination for a blacker horror,
and a deeper woe, and pictured the scaffold-
But here my companions seized an arm on each side; their nerves
were trembling; and, sweeter victory still, I had reached the seldom
trodden places of their hearts, and found the well-spring of their
tears. And now the past had done all it could. We slowly descended,
watching the lights as they twinkled gradually through the town, and
listening to the distant mirth of boys at play, and to the voice of
a young girl warbling somewhere in the dusk, a pleasant sound to
wanderers from old witch times.
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