the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed
by the saints. Scattered also among their pale-faced enemies were
the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native
forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English
witchcraft.

"But where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came
into his heart, he trembled.

Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such
as the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that
our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more.
Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after
verse was sung; and still the chorus of the desert swelled
between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the
final peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the
roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every
other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were mingling and
according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the prince of
all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and
obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke
wreaths above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire
on the rock shot redly forth and formed a glowing arch above its
base, where now appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken,
the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to
some grave divine of the New England churches.

"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice that echoed through the
field and rolled into the forest.