Part 59 (1/2)
”I know, father, but death seems terrible to me sometimes when I am alone here in the night.”
Mrs. Thrasher began to sob and Mrs. Allen looked down upon her child in pale grief.
”Ah, why cannot I, who am old, and used to trouble, take her place,” she said, drearily.
”Yes, mother, I want courage. At first, when they left me, I was a coward, but it is not so of late, at least not often. Something here grows stronger every day.”
The girl laid one hand on her heart, while a soft glow came to her face.
”And that is faith,” said Mr. Thrasher.
”It seems like a living presence; as if my babe had turned to an angel, and were folding its wings here. How can any one think I killed it--I who gloried so in being its mother.”
”We know that you never harmed it,” said Mrs. Allen. ”That is one comfort, my child.”
”No, no; we never thought it, neither your father nor your two mothers,”
said Mrs. Thrasher, planting herself by Mrs. Allen's side; thus suggesting her own right to be considered.
”It is strange,” said Katharine, thoughtfully, ”very strange that any one can believe such things of a poor girl. I am sure no woman in the world ever got this idea of herself.”
”No woman would have the heart to think it,” muttered Mrs. Thrasher; ”but the law, that is stern and cruel enough for any thing.”
”To-morrow it will prove cruel with me, I am sure,” said Katharine; ”when they took me away from home the little children looked after me as if there was blood on my clothes. It made my heart ache to see their frightened faces at the windows as the wagon went by. If children can judge one so harshly, what will a court full of stern men do.”
”The men who look so stern are sometimes very kind at heart,” said Mr.
Thrasher.
Katharine lifted her eyes to his face.
”You will be there, father, and you--and you, my mothers?”
”Yes, Katharine, we will be there,” said both the women at once.
”And a greater than they will be there, Katharine,” added the old man, solemnly, and resting one hand on her head a moment, he turned away.
The two women saw that his lip quivered as he pa.s.sed through the door, but to Katharine he was an embodiment of sublime strength, and it took away half her courage when his shadow disappeared from the threshold of her prison. Alas, she was nothing but a girl, timid from want of experience, and greatly dependent for strength on those she loved. When Katharine Allen was left alone she began to realize that the day of her great trouble was near at hand. A faintness like that of death itself crept over her, and she sat down in the midst of her dungeon chamber, sinking down upon the floor in a wild, dreary way, that would have brought tears to the eyes of her worst enemy.
By many an anxious question she had won from the jailor a general knowledge of the forms which attend a criminal trial. She knew that crowds of curious people, perhaps coa.r.s.e-hearted people, would jostle her on the way to prison--that scores on scores of eyes would follow her with hate and loathing. She saw the band of jurors grasping her life in their will, listening with heavy countenances to the evidence of a crime that was not hers, but of which it seemed impossible that any human tribunal could absolve her.
Then, going to and from the trial, little children would look up at her as they had done when she pa.s.sed the red school-house at Shrub Oak, some with timid pity, others with coa.r.s.e amazement, and others still ready to break forth into hoots and sneers, as if some abhorrent animal had crossed their path. These thoughts were hard to endure. She had so dearly loved little children, and turned so naturally for affection toward all living things, that the edict of hate, though undeserved, made her shrink with absolute pain.
She took up her Bible and tried to read, but the letters ran together on the page, hara.s.sing her sight, but giving back no sense. Thus the evening found her going out into blank s.p.a.ce till the darkness crept through her prison bars and fell over her like a pall.
CHAPTER LII.
THE STREETS AND THE COURT HOUSE.
The next day found a crowd around the court house, hours before the time for opening--an eager-eyed, jostling throng, to whom a trial for life was sure to bring keen excitement of some kind. In a Puritan State, where places of amus.e.m.e.nt are seldom found, any thing calculated to excite public curiosity is an event which makes the most painful occasions a sort of holiday for the populace. The horrible fascination which a trial like that always possesses for the human mind was added to other feelings with which the people of that day frequented the courts of justice, and any trial which had a tragic interest for the people, drew crowds around the court house, full of eager curiosity, and sometimes almost ferocious excitement--crowds which watched the progress of events like men enthralled by the horror of a terrible play.