The crowd murmured. The lawyers were silent for a moment. Only the pens scratched.

“Did you see the witch mark?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Plain as the nose on her face! I saw it, sir. God is my witness.”

It was not necessary to call on God so long as the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey was at hand. This was his moment. Goodwife was helped back to her place in the audience and Higbed silently signaled Hervey to stand. The tribunal was hushed now, shocked by the story they had heard, and in the quietness Faithful Unto Death Hervey slid from behind the table and walked slowly up and down in front of the lawyers. For a few seconds it seemed he would not speak, but then he jerked his head up, stopped walking, and looked at the audience over Campion’s head.

“This is a sadness to us, a great and manifold sadness, that this girl, whom I numbered among my flock, should now be seen as a servant of the enemy. And no earthly enemy! No! She is the Devil’s spawn! Yes! He is among us as a raging lion! The devil! Lucifer! Apollyon! Beelzebub! Satan!” He stopped, eyes glaring at the audience. He dropped his voice, becoming almost confidential. The two clerks had stopped writing. “He was in the Garden of Eden, brothers and sisters, and as we in this country try to plant a new garden, a kingdom of heaven, he is back! Yes! The devil!” He pointed a dramatic finger at Campion. “Dorcas. Did you have a familiar?”

She said nothing. Faithful Unto Death’s Adam’s apple slid down his throat as he shook his head. “She is reduced to silence, brethren, for the truth is not in her.” He shook his head again sadly, turned a pace or two up the room, and stopped again. “In the room where we found her good husband’s body, in that room, brethren, there was a cat. A dead cat. It is my belief, and it can be no more unless Almighty God wrings from this wretched woman a confession of her evil, that the cat, the dead cat, was Dorcas Scammell’s familiar.” He sighed.

“You heard, all of you!” Here he swept his finger round to encompass the lawyers at their table. “You heard Goodwife puzzle how a slim girl, of no strength, could overcome an armed man in the prime of his life. She did not, brethren, she did not!” He leaned toward the audience, in full flow now. “The devil did it! The devil! For he had given her a familiar! It is my belief, my prayerful belief, that the cat, at her command, tore the throat from our dear departed brother. Oh, brethren! Strange are the workings of evil. Brother Scammell, calling upon the Lord, killed his assailant, thus rendering the witch powerless, but in winning this battle over the cat he lost his own life too.” He paused for effect and in the pause Caleb Higbed cleared his throat and spoke in his mild, friendly voice.