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, however, when an unexpected scene occurred. In
that moment of her peril, when every eye frowned with death, a little
timid boy threw his arms round his mother.

"I am here, mother; it is I, and I will go with thee to prison," he
exclaimed.

She gazed at him with a doubtful and almost frightened expression, for
she knew that the boy had been cast out to perish, and she had not
hoped to see his face again. She feared, perhaps, that it was but one
of the happy visions with which her excited fancy had often deceived
her in the solitude of the desert or in prison; but when she felt his
hand warm within her own and heard his little eloquence of childish
love, she began to know that she was yet a mother.

"Blessed art thou, my son!" she sobbed. "My heart was withered--yea,