Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/280

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her grandmother; but as her call seemed unheard or unheeded, she raised herself painfully from her pillow and called again.

And Winny came—but oh! merciful heavens! what had happened? What was the awful horror that spoke in those great, wildly rolling eyes—which had blanched to a gray ashiness that dusky face?

"Oh! Winny, Winny, what is it? Oh! tell me—tell me at once," murmured the girl's pale, quivering lips—"tell me what it is. I can bear any thing better than silence. Tell me—oh! tell me—or I shall go mad."

And poor Winny, thus adjured, did tell. She had been cautioned not to tell—to wait, and let others break the sad tidings carefully to Alice; but grief and horror rendered all precaution impossible to her, as, throwing herself down in abject terror, she burst out with the terrible truth in all the passionate volubility of her race.

Goody Campbell had been cried out upon by the accusing girls—the constables had come with a warrant that morning and taken her away to jail, to be tried as a witch, like poor Goody Nurse!