Cursed are they in the delight and pleasure of their hearts! Woe to them in their
death-hour, whether it come swiftly with blood and violence or after long and
lingering pain! Woe in the dark house, in the rottenness of the grave, when the
children's children shall revile the ashes of the fathers! Woe, woe, woe, at the
judgment, when all the persecuted and all the slain in this bloody land, and the
father, the mother and the child, shall await them in a day that they cannot
escape! Seed of the faith, seed of the faith, ye whose hearts are moving with a
power that ye know not, arise, wash your hands of this innocent blood! Lift your
voices, chosen ones, cry aloud, and call down a woe and a judgment with me!"
Having thus given vent to the flood of malignity which she mistook for
inspiration, the speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the hysteric
shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience generally had not
been drawn onward in the current with her own. They remained stupefied,
stranded, as it were, in the midst of a torrent which deafened them by its roaring,
but might not move them by its violence. The clergyman, who could not hitherto
have ejected the usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force, now
addressed her in the tone of just indignation and legitimate authority.
"Get you down, woman, from the holy place which you profane," he said, "Is
it to the Lord's house that you come to pour forth the foulness of your heart and
the inspiration of the devil? Get you down, and remember that the sentence of
death is on you—yea, and shall be executed, were it but for this day's work."
"I go, friend, I go, for the voice hath had its utterance," replied she, in a
depressed, and even mild, tone. "I have done my mission unto thee and to thy
people; reward me with stripes, imprisonment or death, as ye shall be permitted."
The weakness of exhausted passion caused her steps to totter as she descended
the pulpit stairs.
The people, in the mean while, were stirring to and fro on the floor of the
house, whispering among themselves and glancing toward the intruder. Many of
them now recognized her as the woman who had assaulted the governor with
frightful language as he passed by the window of her prison; they knew, also,
that she was adjudged to suffer death, and had been preserved only by an
involuntary banishment into the wilderness. The new outrage by which she had
provoked her fate seemed to render further lenity impossible, and a gentleman in
military dress, with a stout man of inferior rank, drew toward the door of the
meetinghouse and awaited her approach. Scarcely did her feet press the floor,