奇异的世界 第一季 The Twilight Zone Season 1(1985)
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A MESSAGE FROM CHARITY by William M. Lee That summer of the year 1700 was the hottest in the memory of the very oldest inhabitants.Because the year ushered in a new century, some held that the events were related and that for a whole hundred years Bay Colony would be as torrid and steamy as the Indies themselves. There was a good deal of illness in Anncs Towne, and a score had died before the weather broke at last in late September. For the great part they were oldsters who succumbed, but some of the young were sick too, and Charity Paynes as sick as any. Charity had turned eleven in the spring and had still the figure and many of tlie ways of thinking of a child, but she was tall and strong and tanned by the New England sun, for she spent many hours helping her father in the fields and trying to keep some sort of order in the dooryard and garden. During the weeks when she lay bedridden and, for a time, burning up with the fever, Thomas Carter and his good wife Beulah came as neighbors should to lend a hand, for Charity’s mother had died abirthing and Obie Payne could not cope all alone. Charity lay on a pallet covered by a straw-filled mattress which her father, frantic to be doing something for her and finding little enough to do beyond the saying of short fervent prayers, refilled with fresh straw as often as Beninlah would allow. A few miles down Harmon Brook was a famous beaver pond where in winter the Annes Towne people cut ice to be stored under layers of bark and chips. It had been used heavily early in the summer, and there was not very much ice left, but those families with sickness in the home might draw upon it for the patient’s comfort. So Charity had bits of ice folded into a woolen cloth to lay on her forehead when the fever was bad. William Trowbridge, who had apprenticed in medicine down in Philadelphia, attended the girl,and pronounced her illness a sort of summer cholera which was claiming victims all up and down the brook. Trowbridge was only moderately esteemed in Annes Towne, being better, it was said, at delivering Iambs and foals than at treating human maladies. He was a gruff and notional man, and he was prone to state his views on a subject and then walk away instead of waiting to argue and perhaps be refuted. Not easy to get along with. For Charit' he prescribed a diet of beef tea with barley and another tea, very unpleasant to the taste, made from pounded willow bark. What was more, all her drinking water was to be boiled. Since there was no other advice to be had, they followed it and in due course Charity got well. She ran a great fever for five days, and it was midway in this period when the strange dreams began. Not dreams really, for she was awake though often out of her senses, knowing her father now and then, other times seeing him as a gaunt and frightening stranger. When she was better,still weak but wholly rational, she tried to tell her visitors about these dreams. ‘'Some person was talking and talking,” she recalled. "A man or perchance a lad. He talked not to me, but I could hear or understand that he said. Twas strange talk indeed, a porridge of the King's English and other words of no sense at all. And with the talk I did see some fearful sights.” "La, now, don’t even think of it,” said Dame Beulah. "But I would fen both think and talk of it, for I am no longer af eared. Such things I saw in bits and flashes, as ’twere seen by a strike of lightning.” "Talk and ye be so minded, then. There’s naught impious in y’r conceits. Tell me again about the carriages which travelled along with nary horse.” Annes Towne survived the Revlution and the War of 1812, and for a time seemed likely to become a larger, if not an important community. But when its farms became less productive and the last virgin timber disappeared from the area, Annes Towne began to disappear too, dvdndling from two score of homes to a handful, then to none; and the last foundation had crumbled to rubble and been scattered a hundred years before it could have been nominated a historic site. In time dirt tracks became stone roads, which gave way to black meanderings of macadam, and these in their turn were displaced by never ending bands of concrete. The cross-roads site of Annes Towne was presently cleared of brambles, sumac and red cedar, and over night it was a shopping center. Now, for mile on spreading mile the New England hills were dotted with ranch houses, salt boxes and split-level colonial homes. During four decades Harmon Brook had been fouled and poisoned by a textile bleach and dye works. Rising labor costs had at last driven the small company to extinction. With that event and increasingly rigorous legislation, the stream had come back to the extent that it could now be bordered by some of these prosperous homes and by the golf course of the Anniston Country Club. With aquatic plants and bull frogs and a few fish inhabiting its waters, it was not obvious to implicate the Harmon for the small outbreak of typhoid which occurred in the hot dry summer of 1965. No one was dependent on it for drinking water. To the discomfort of a local milk distributor,who was entirely blameless, indictment of the stream was delayed and obscured by the fact that the organisms involved were not a typical strain of Salmonella typhosa. Indeed they ultimately found a place in the American Type Culture Collection, under a new number. Young Peter Wood, whose home was one of those pleasantly situated along the stream, was the most seriously ill of all the cases, partly because he was the first, mostly because his symptoms went unremarked for a time. Peter was sixteen and not highly communicative to either parents or friends. The Wood Seniors both taught, at Harvard and Wellesley respectively. They were intelligent and wellintentioned parents, but sometimes a little oflE-hand, and like many of their friends, they raised their son to be a miniature adult in as many ways as possible. His sports, tennis and golf, were adult sports. His reading tastes were catholic, ranging from Camus to A1 Capp to science fiction. He had been carefully held back in his progress through the lower grades so that he would not enter college more than a year or so ahead of his age. He had an adequate number of friends and sufficient areas of congeniality with them. He had gotten a driver's license shortly after his sixteenth birthday and drove seriously and well enough to be allowed nearly unrestricted use of the second car. So Peter Wood was not the sort of boy to complain to his family about headache, mild nausea and other s}Tnptoms. Instead, after they had persisted for forty-eight hours, he telephoned for an appointment on his own initiative and visited their family doctor. Suddenly, in the waiting room, he became much worse, and was given a cot in an examining room until Dr. Maxwell was free to drive him home. The doctor did not seriously suspect typhoid, though it was among several possibilities which he counted as less likely. Peter's temperature rose from 104° to over 105° that night. No nurse was to be had until morning, and his parents alternated in at- tendance in his bedroom. There was no cause for alarm, since the patient was full of widespectrum antibiotic. But he slept only fitfully with intervals of waking delirium. He slapped at the sheet, tossed around on the bed and muttered or spoke now and then. Some of the talk was understandable. ‘There’s a forest,” he said. “What?” asked his father. “There’s a forest the other side of the stream.” “Oh.” “Can you see it?’ “No, I’m sitting inside here with you. Take it easy, son.” “Some deer are coming down to drink, along the edge of Weller’s pasture.” “Is that so?” “Last year a mountain lion killed two of them, right where they drank. Is it raining “No, it isn’t. It would be fine if we could have some.” “It’s raining. I can hear it on the roof.” A pause. “It drips down the chimney.” Peter turned his head to look at his father, momentarily clear eyed. “How long since there’s been a forest across the stream?” Dr. Wood reflected on the usual difficulty of answering explicit questions and on his own ignorance of history. “A long time. I expect this valley has been farm land since colonial days.” “Funny,” Peter said. “I shut my eyes and I can see a forest. Really big trees. On our side of the stream there’s a kind of a garden and an apple tree and a path goes down to the water.” “It sounds pleasant.” “Yeah.” “Tiy don’t you try going to sleep?” “OK.” The antibiotic accomplished much less than it should have done in Peter’s case, and he stayed very sick for several days. Even after diagnosis, there appeared no good reason to move him from home. A trained nurse was on duty after that first night, and tranquilizers and sedatives reduced her job to no more than keeping a watch. There were only a few sleepy communications from her young patient. It was on the fourth night, the last one when he had any significant fever, that he asked : ‘Were you ever a girl?” “Well, thanks a lot. Tm not as old as all that.” “I mean, were you ever inside a girl?" “I think you'd better go back to sleep, young man.” “I mean — I guess I don't know what I mean.” He uttered no oddities thereafter, at least when there was any one within hearing. During the days of his recovery and convalescence, abed and later stretched out on a chaise lounge on the terrace looking down toward Harmon Brook, he took to whispering. He moved his lips hardly at all, but vocalized each word, or if he fell short of this, at least put each thought into carefully chosen words and sentences. The idea that he might be in mental communication with another person was not, to him, very startling. Steeped in the lore of science fiction whose heroes were, as like as not, adepts at telepathy, the event seemed almost an expected outcome of his wishes. Many nights he had lain awake sending out (he hoped) a mental probe, trying and trying to find the trick, for surely there must be one, of making a contact. Now that such a contact was established he sought, just as vainly, for some means to prove it. How do you know you're not dreaming, he asked himself. How do you know you're not still delirious? The difficulty was that his communication with Charity Payne could be by mental route only. Had there been any possibility for Peter to reach the girl by mail, by telephone, by travel and a personal visit, their rapport on a mental level might have been confirmed, and their messages cross-checked. During their respective periods of illness, Peter and Charity achieved a communion of a sort which consisted at first of brief glimpses, each of the other's envi- ronment. They were not — then — seeing through one another's eyes, so much as tapping one another's visual recollections. While Peter stared at a smoothly plastered ceiling, Charity looked at rough hewn beams. He, when his aching head permitted, could turn on one side and watch a television program. She, by the same movement, could see a small smoky fire in a monstrous stone fireplace, where water was heated and her beef and barley broth kept steaming. Instead of these current images, current for each of them in their different times, they saw stored-up pictures, not perfect, for neither of them was remembering perfectly; rather like pictures viewed through a badly ground lens, with only the objects of principal interest in clear detail. Charity saw her fearful sights with no basis for comprehension — a section of dual highway animated by hurtling cars and trucks and not a person, recognizable as a person, in sight; a tennis court, and what on earth could it be; a jet plane crossing the sky; a vast and many storied building which glinted with glass and the silvery tracings of untarnished steel. At the start she was terrified nearly out of her wits. It s all very well to dream, and a nightmare is only a bad dream after you waken, but a nightmare is assembled from familiar props. You could reasonably be chased by a dragon (like the one in the picture that St. George had to fight) or be lost in a cave (like the one on Parish Hill, only bigger and darker). To dream of things which have no meaning at all is worse. She was spared prolongation of her terror by Peter’s comprehension of their situation and his intuitive realization of what the experience, assuming a two way channel, might be doing to her. The vignettes of her life which he was seeing were in no way disturbing. Everything he saw through her mind was within his framework of reference. Horses and cattle, fields and forest, rutted lanes and narrow wooden bridges, were things he knew, even if he did not live among them. He recognized Harmon Brook because, directly below their home, there was an immense .granite boulder parting the flow, shaped like a great bear-like animal with its head down, drinking. It was strange that the stream, in all those years, had neither silted up nor eroded away to hide or change the seeming of the rock, but so it was. He saw it through Charity’s eyes and knew the place in spite of the forest on the far hill. When he first saw this partly familiar, partly strange scene, he heard from somewhere within his mind the frightened cry of a little girl. His thinking at that time was fever distorted and incoherent. It was two days later after a period of several hours of normal temperature, when he conceived the idea — with sudden virtual certainty — these pastoral scenes he had been dreaming were truly something seen with other eyes. There were subtle perceptual differences between those pictures and his own seeing. To his mother, writing at a table near the windows, he said, think I’m feeling better. How about a glass of orange juice?” She considered. '‘The doctor should be here in an hour or so. In the meantime you can make do with a little more ice water. I’ll get it. Drink it slowly, remember.” Two hundred and sixty-five years away. Charity Payne thought suddenly, “How about a glass of orange juice?” She had been drowsing, but her eyes popped wide open. “Mercy,” she said aloud. Dame Beulah bent over the pallet. "What is it, child?” "How about a glass of orange juice?” Charity repeated. "La, 'tis gibberish.” A cool hand was laid on her forehead. "Would ye like a bit of ice to bite on?” Orange juice, whatever that might be, was forgotten. Over the next several days Peter Wood tried time and again to address the stranger directly, and repeatedly failed. Some of what he said to others reached her in fragments and further confused her state of mind. What she had to say, on the other hand, was coming through to him with increasing frequency. Often it was only a word or a phrase with a quaint twist like a historical novel, and he would he puzzling over it, trying to place the person on the other end of their erratic line of communication. His recognition of Bear Rock, which he had seen once again through her eyes, was disturbing. His science fiction conditioning led him naturally to specu- late about the parallel worlds concept, but that seemed not to fit the facts as he saw them. Peter reached the stage of convalescence when he could spend all day on the terrace and look down, when he wished, at the actual rock. There, for the hundredth time he formed the syllables, "Hello, who are you?” and for the first time received a response. It was a silence, but a silence reverberating with shock, totally different in quality from the blankness which had met him before. "My name is Peter Wood."' There was a long pause before the answer came, softly and timidly. "My name is Charity Payne. Where are you? What is happening to me?” The following days of enforced physical idleness were filled with exploration and discovery. Peter found out almost at once that, while they were probably no more than a few feet apart in their respective worlds, a gulf of more than a quarter of a thousand years stretched between them. Such a contact through time was a greater departure from known physical laws, certainly, than the mere fact of telepathic communication. Peter revelled in his growing ability. In another way the situation was heart breaking. No matter how well they came to know one another, he realized, they could never meet, and after no more than a few hours of acquaintance* he found that he was regarding this naive child of another time with esteem and a sort of affection. They arrived shortly at a set of rules which seemed to govern and limit their communications. Each came to be able to hear the other speak, whether aloud or subvocally. Each learned to perceive through the other s senses, up to point. Visual perception became better and better especially for direct seeing while, as they grew more skillful, the remembered scene became less clear. Tastes and odors could be transmitted, if not accurately, at least with the expected response. Tactile sensations could not be perceived in the slightest degree. There was little that Peter Wood could learn from Charity. He came to recognize her immediate associates and liked them, particularly her gaunt, weather-beaten father. He formed a picture of Puritanism which, as an ethic, he had to respect, while the supporting dogma evoked nothing but impatience. At first he exposed her to the somewhat scholarly agnosticism which prevailed in his own home, but soon found that it distressed her deeply and he left off. There was so much he could report from the vantage of 1965, so many things he could show her which did not conflict with her tenets and faith. He discovered that Charity’s ability to read was remarkable, though what she had read was nat- urally limited — the Bible from cover to cover. Pilgrims’ Progress, several essays and two of Shakespeare’s plays. Encouraged by a schoolmaster who must have been an able and dedicated man, she had read and reread everything permitted to her. Her quite respectable vocabulary was gleaned from these sources and may have equalled Peters own in size. In addition she possessed an uncanny word sense which helped her greatly in understanding Peter’s jargon. She learned the taste of bananas and frankfurters, chocolate ice cream and coke, and displayed such an addiction to these delicacies that Peter rapidly put on some of the pounds he had lost. One day she asked him w hat he looked like. ‘Well, I told you I am sixteen, and I’m sort of thin.” “Does thee possess a mirror?” she asked. “Yes, of course.” At her urging and with some embarrassment he went and stood before a mirrored door in his mother’s bedroom. “Marry,” she said after a dubious pause, “I doubt not thee is comely. But folk have changed.” “Now let me look at you,” he demanded. “Nay, we have no mirror.” “Then go and look in the brook. There’s a quiet spot below the rock where the water is dark.” He was delighted with her appearance, having remembered Hogarth’s unkind representations of a not much later period and being prepared for disappointment. She was in fact very much prettier by Peter’s standards than by those of her own time, which favored plumpness and smaller mouths. He told her she was a beauty, and her tentative fondness for him turned instantly to adulation. Previously Peter had had fleeting glimpses of her slim, smoothly muscled body, as she had bathed or dressed. Now, having seen each other face to face, they were overcome by embarrassment and both of them, when not fully clothed, stared resolutely into the corners of the room. For a time Charity believed that Peter was a dreadful liar. The sight and sound of planes in the sky were not enough to convince her of the fact of flying, so he persuaded his father to take him along on a business flight to Washington. After she had recovered from the marvels of airplane travel, he took her on a walking tour of the Capitol. Now she would believe anything, even that the American Revolution had been a success. They joined his father for lunch at an elegant French restaurant and she experienced, vicariously, the pleasures of half of a half bottle of white wine and a chocolate eclair. Charity was by way of getting spoiled. Fully recovered and with school only a week away, Peter decided to brush up his tennis. When reading or doing nothing in particular, he was always dimly aware of Charity and her immediate surroundings, and by sharpening his attention he could bring her clearly to the forefront of his mind. Tennis displaced her completely and for an hour or two each day he was unaware of her doings. Had he been a few vcars older and a little more knowledgeable and realistic about the world, he might have guessed the peril into which he was leading her. Fictional villainy abounded, of course, and many items in the news didn't bear thinking about, but by his own firsthand experience, people were well intentioned and kindly, and for the most part they reacted to events with reasonable intelligence. It was what he expected instinctively. A first hint of possible consequences reached him as he walked home from one of his tennis sessions. ''Ursula Miller said an ill thing to me today." "Oh?" His answer was abstracted since, in all truth, he was beginning to run out of interest in the village gossip which was all the news she had to offer. "Yesterday she said it was an untruth about the thirteen states. Today she avowed that I was devil ridden. And Ursula has been my best friend." "I warned you that people wouldn't believe you and you might get yourself laughed at," he said. Then suddenly he caught up in his thinking. "Good Lord — Salem." "Please, Peter, thee must stop taking thy Maker’s name." "ril try to remember. Listen, Charity, how many people have you been talking to about our — about what's been happening?" "As I have said. At first to Father and Aunt Beulah. They did believe I was still addled from the fever.'' "And to Ursula." "Aye, but she vowed to keep it secret." "Do you believe she will, now that she’s started name calling?" A lengthy pause. "I fear she may have told the lad who keeps her company." "I should have warned you. Damn it, I should have laid it on the line." "Peter!" "Sorry. Charit}% not another word to anybody. Tell Ursula you've been fooling — telling stories to amuse her." " 'Twould not be right." "So what. Charity, don't be scared, but listen. People might get to thinking you're a witch." "Oh, they couldn't." 'Why not?" "Because I am not one. Witches are — oh, no, Peter." He could sense her growing alarm. "Go tell Ursula it was a pack of lies. Do it now." "I must milk the cow." "Do it now." "Nay, the cow must be milked." "Then milk her faster than she's ever been milked before." On the Sabbath, three little boys threw stones at Charity as she and her father left the church. Obadiah PaTie caught one of them and caned him, and then would have had to fight the lad’s father save that the pastor intervened. It was on the Wednesday that calamity befell. Two tightlipped men approached Obadiah in the fields. "Squire wants to see thy daughter Charity." "Squire?" "Aye. Squire Hacker. He would talk with her at once." "Squire can talk to me if so be he would have her reprimanded. What has she been up to?" 'Witchcraft, that's what," said the second man, sounding as if he were savoring the dread news. "Croft's old ewe delivered a monstrous lamb. Pointy pinched-up face and an extra eye." He crossed himself. "Great God!" " 'Twill do ye no good to blaspheme, Obadiah. She's to come with us now." "I'll not have it. Charity's no witch, as ye well know, and I'll not have her converse with Squire. Ye mind the Squire's lecherous ways." "That's not here nor there. Witchcraft is afoot again and all are saying 'tis your Charity at bottom of it." "She shall not go." First one, then the other displayed the stout truncheons they had held concealed behind their backs. " 'Twas of our own good will we told thee first. Come now and inStruct thy daughter to go with us featly. Else take a clout on the head and sleep tonight in the goal house.’' They left Obie Payne gripping a broken wrist and staring in numbed bewilderment from his door stoop, and escorted Charity, not touching her, walking at a cautious distance to either side, to Squire Hacker's big house on the hill. In the village proper, little groups of people watched from doorways and, though some had always been her good friends, none had the courage now to speak a word of comfort. Peter went with her each reluctant step of the way, counting himself responsible for her plight and helpless to do the least thing about it. He sat alone in the living room of his home, eyes closed to sharpen his reading of her surroundings. She offered no response to his whispered reassurances and perhaps did not hear them. At the door her guards halted and stood aside, leaving her face to face with the grim-visaged squire. He moved backward step by step, and she followed him, as if hypnotised, into the shadowed room. The squire lowered himself into a high-backed chair. *‘Look at me." Unwillingly she raised her head and stared into his face. Squire Hacker was a man of medium height, very broad in the shoulder and heavily muscled. His face was disfigured by deep pock marks and the scar of a knife cut across the jaw, souvenirs of his earlier years in the Carib Islands. From the Islands he had also brought some wealth which he had since increased manyfold by the buying of land, share cropping and money lending. ‘‘Charity Payne,” he said sternly, “take off thy frock.” “No. No, please.” “I command it. Take off thy garments for I must search thee for witch marks.” He leaned forward, seized her arm and pulled her to him. “If thee would avoid public trial and condemnation, thee will do as I say.” His hands began to explore her body. Even by the standards of the time, Charity regularly spent extraordinary hours at hard physical labor and she possessed a strength which would have done credit to many young men. Squire Hacker should have been more cautious. “Nay,” she shouted and drawing back her arm, hit him in the nose with all the force she could muster. He released her with a roar of rage, then, while he was mopping away blood and tears with the sleeve of his ruffled shirt and shouting imprecations, she turned and shot out the door. The guards, converging, nearly grabbed her as she passed but, once away, they stood no chance of catching her and for a wonder none of the villagers took up the chase. She was well on the way home and covering the empty road at a fast trot before Peter was able to gain her attention. “Charity’ he said, Charity, you mustn’t go home. If that s. o. b. of a squire has any influence with the court, you just fixed yourself.” She was beginning to think again and could even translate Peter’s strange language. “Influence!” she said. “Marry, he is the court. He is the judge.” “Ouch!” “I wot well I must not be found at home. I am trying to think where to hide. I might have had trial by water. Now they will burn me for a surety. I do remember what folk said about the last witch trials.” “Could you make your way to Boston and then maybe to New York — New Amsterdam?” “Leave my home forever! Nay. And I would not dare the trip.” “Then take to the woods. Where can you go?” “Take to — ? Oh. To the cave, mayhap.” “Don’t too many people know about it?” “Aye. But there is another across the brook and beyond Tom Carter’s freehold. I do believe none know of it but me. ’Tis very small. We must ford the brook just yonder, then walk that fallen tree. There is a trail which at sundown will be tromped by a herd of deer.” “You’re thinking about dogs?” “Aye, on the morrow. There is no good pack in Annes Towne.” ‘Tou live in a savage age, Charity.” “Aye,” she said wryly. “ ’Tis fortunate we have not invented the bomb.” “Damn it,” Peter said, “I wish we’d never met. I wish I hadn’t taken you on that plane trip. I wish I’d warned you to keep quiet about it.” 'Te could not guess I would be so foolish.” “What can you do out here without food?” “I’d liefer starve than be in the stocks, but there is food to be had in the forest, some sorts of roots and toadstools and autumn berries. I shall hide myself for three days, I think, then seek out my father by night and do as he tells me. When she was safely hidden in the cave, which was small indeed but well concealed by a thicket of young sassafras, she said : “Now we can think. First, I would have an answer from thy superior wisdom. Can one be truly a witch and have no knowledge of it.” “Don’t be foolish. There’s no such thing as a witch.” “Ah well, ’tis a matter for debate by scholars. I do feel in my heart that I am not a witch, if there be such creatures. That book, Peter, of which ye told me, which recounts the history of these colonies.” ^Tes?” ‘'Will ye look in it and learn if I came to trial and what befell me?’' 'There’d be nothing about it. It’s just a small book. But — ” To his parents’ puzzlement, Peter spent the following morning at the Boston Public Library. In the afternoon he shifted his operations to the Historical Society. He found at last a listing of the names of women known to have been tried for witchcraft between the years 1692 and 1697. Thereafter he could locate only an occasional individual name. There was no record of any Charity Payne in 1700 or later. He started again when the reading room opened next day, interrupting the task only momentarily for brief exchanges with Charity. His lack of success was cheering to her, for she overestimated the completeness of the records. At close to noon he was scanning the pages of a photostated doctoral thesis when his eye caught a familiar name. ‘'Jonas Hacker,” it read. “Born Liverpool, England, date uncertain, perhaps 1659, was the principal figure in a curious action of law which has not become a recognized legal precedent in English courts. “Squire Hacker, a resident of Annes Towne (cf. Anniston), was tried and convicted of willful murder and larceny. The trial was posthumous, several months after his decease from natural causes in 1704. The sentence pronounced was death by hanging which, since it could not be imposed, was commuted to forfeiture of his considerable estate. His land and other possessions reverted to the Crown and were henceforward administered by the Governor of Bay Colony. “While the motivation and procedure of the court may have been open to question, evidence of Hacker’s guilt was clear cut. The details are these. . . .” “Hey, Charity,” Peter rumbled in his throat. “Aye?” “Look at this page. Let me flatten it out.” “Read it please, Peter. Is it bad news?” “No. Good, I think.” He read the paragraphs on Jonas Hacker. “Oh, Peter, can it be true?” “It has to be. Can you remember any details?” “Marry, I remember well when they disappeared, the ship’s captain and a common sailor. They were said to have a great sack of gold for some matter of business with Squire. But it could not be. for they never reached his house.” “That’s what Hacker said, but the evidence showed that they got there — got there and never got away. Now here’s what you must do. Late tonight, go home.” “I would fen do so, for I am terrible athirst.” “No, wait. What’s your parson’s name?” "John Hix'' "Can you reach his house tonight without being seen?” "Aye. It backs on a glen.” "Go there. He can protect you better than your father can until vour trial.” "Must I be tried?” "Of course. We want to clear your name. Now let’s do some planning.” The town hall could seat no more than a score of people, and the day was fair; so it was decided that the trial should be held on the common, in discomforting proximity to the stocks. Visitors came from as far as twenty miles away, afoot or in carts, and nearly filled the common itself. Squire Hacker’s own armchair was the only seat provided. Others stood or sat on the patchy grass. The squire came out of the inn presently, fortified with rum, and took his place. He wore a brocaded coat and a wide-rimmed hat and would have been more impressive if it had not been for his still swollen nose, now permanently askew. A way was made through the crowd then, and Charity, flanked on one side by John Hix, on the other by his tall son, walked to the place where she was to stand. Voices were suddenly stilled. Squire Hacker did not condescend to look directly at the prisoner, but fixed a cold stare on the minister; a warning that his protection of the girl would not be forgiven. He cleared his throat. "Charity Payne, is thee willing to swear upon the Book?” "Aye.” "No mind. We may forego the swearing. All can see that ye are fearful.” "Nay,” John Hix interrupted. "She shall have the opportunity to swear to her word. ’Twould not be legal otherwise.” He extended a Bible to Charity, who placed her fingers on it and said, "I do swear to speak naught but the truth.” Squire Hacker glowered and lost no time coming to the attack. "Charity Payne, do ye deny being a witch?” "I do.” ‘Te do be one?” "Nay, I do deny it.” "Speak what ye mean. What have ye to say of the monstrous lamb born of Master Croft’s ewe?” "I know naught of it.” "Was’t the work of Satan?” "I know not.” "Was’t then the work of God?” "I know not.” "Thee holds then that He might create such a monster?” "I know naught about it.” "In thy own behalf will thee deny saying that this colony and its neighbors will in due course make war against our King?” "Nay, I do not deny that.” There was a stir in the crowd and some angry muttering. ‘‘Did ye tell Mistress Ursula Miller that ye had flown a great journey through the air?’' “Nay." “Mistress Ursula will confound thee in that lie." “I did tell Ursula that someday folk would travel in that wise. I did tell her that I had seen such travel through eyes other than my own." Squire Hacker leaned forward. He could not have hoped for a more damning statement. John Hix head bowed in prayer. “Continue." “Aye. I am blessed with a sort of second sight." “Blessed or cursed?" “God permits it. It cannot be accursed." “Continue. What evil things do ye see by this second sight?" “Most oftentimes I see the world as it will one day be. Thee said evil. Such sights are no more and no less evil than we see around us." Hacker pondered. There was an uncomfortable wrongness about this child’s testimony. She should have been gibbering with fear, when in fact she seemed self-possessed. He wondered if by some strange chance she really had assistance from the devil’s minions. “Charity Payne, thee has confessed to owning second sight. Does thee use this devilish power to spy on thy neighbors?" It was a telling point. Some among the spectators exchanged discomfited glances. “Nay, ’tis not devilish, and I cannot see into the doings of my neighbors — except — " “Speak up, girl. Except what?" “Once I did perceive by my seeing a most foul murder." “Murder!" The squire’s voice was harsh. A few in the crowd made the sign of the cross. “Aye. To tell true, two murders. Men whose corpses do now lie buried unshriven in a dark cellar close onto this spot. ’Tween them lies a satchel of golden guineas." It took a minute for the squire to find his voice. “A cellar?" he croaked. “Aye, a root cellar, belike the place one would keep winter apples." She lifted her head and stared straight into the squire’s eyes, challenging him to inquire further. The silence was ponderous as he strove to straighten out his thoughts. To this moment he was safe, for her words described every cellar in and about the village. But she knew. Beyond any question, she knew. Her gaze, seeming to penetrate the darkest corners of his mind, told him that, even more clearly than her words. Squire Hacker believed in witches and considered them evil and deserving of being destroyed. He had seen and shuddered at the horrible travesty of a lamb in farmer Croft s stable yard, but he had seen like deformities in the Caribbee and did not hold the event an evidence of witchcraft. Not for a minute had he thought Charity a witch, for she showed none of the signs. Her wild talk and the growing rumors had simply seemed to provide the opportunity for some dalliance with a pretty young girl and possibly, in exchange for an acquittal, a lien upon her father’s land. Now he was unsure. She must indeed have second sight to have penetrated his secret, for it had been stormy that night five years ago, and none had seen the missing sailors near to his house. Of that he was confident. Further, shockingly, she knew how and where they lay buried. Another question and answer could not be risked. He moved his head slowly and looked right and left at the silent throng. ‘'Charity Payne,” he said, picking his words with greatest care, “has put her hand on the Book and sworn to tell true, an act, I opine, she could scarce perform, were she a witch. Does any person differ with me?” John Hix looked up in startled hopefulness. “Very well. The lambing at Master Croft’s did have the taint of witchcraft, but Master Trowbridge has stated his belief that some noxious plant is growing in Croft’s pasture, and ’tis at the least possible. Besides, the ewe is old and she has thrown runty lambs before. “To quote Master Trowbridge again, he holds that the cholera which has afflicted us so sorely comes from naught but the drinking of bad water. He advises boiling it. I prefer adding a httle rum.” He got the laughter he sought. There was a lessening of tension. “As to second sight.” Again he swept the crowd with his gaze. “Charity had laid claim to it, and I called it a devilish gift to test her, but second sight is not witchcraft, as ye well know. My ovm grandmother had it, and a better woman ne’er lived. I hold it to be a gift of God. Would any challenge me? “Very well. I would warn Charity to be cautious in what she sees and tells, for second sight can lead to grievous disputations. I do not hold with her story of two murdered men although I think that in her own sight she is telling true. If any have aught of knowl- edge of so dire a crime, I adjure him to step forth and speak.” He waited. “Nobody? Then, by the authority conferred on me by his Excellency the Governor, I declare that Charity Payne is innocent of the charges brought. She maybe released.” This was not at all the eventuality which a few of Squire Hackers cronies had foretold. The crowd had clearly expected a day long inquisition climaxed by a prisoner to bedevil in the stocks. The Squire’s about-face and his abrupt ending of the trial surprised them and angered a few. They stood uncertain. Then someone shouted hurrah and someone else called for three cheers for Squire Hacker, and all in a minute the gathering had lost its hate and was taking on the look of a picnic. Men headed for the tavern. Parson Hix said a long prayer to which few listened, and everybody gathered around to wring Obie Payne’s good hand and to give his daughter a squeeze. At intervals through the afternoon and evening Peter touched lightly on Charity’s mind, finding her carefree and happily occupied with visitors. He chose not to obtrude himself until she called. Late that night she lay on her mattress and stared into the dark. ‘Teter,” she whispered. "‘Yes, Charity.” ''Oh, thank you again.” "Forget it. I got you into the mess. Now you’re out of it. Anyway, I didn’t really help. It all had to work out the way it did, because that’s the way it had happened. You see?” "No, not truly. How do we know that Squire won’t dig up those old bones and burn them?” "Because he didn’t. Four years from now somebody will find them.” "No, Peter, I do not understand, and I am afeared again.” "Why, Charity?” "It must be wrong, thee and me talking together like this and knowing what is to be and what is not.” "But what could be wrong about it?” "That I do not know, but I think ’twere better you should stay in your time and me in mine. Goodbye, Peter.” "Charity!” "And God bless you.” Abruptly she was gone and in Peter’s mind there was an emptiness and a knowledge of being alone. He had not known that she could close him out like this. With the passing of days he became skeptical and in time he might have disbelieved entirely. But Charity visited him again. It was October. He was alone and studying, without much interest. "Peter.” "Charity, it’s you.” "Yes. For a minute, please Peter, for only a minute, but I had to tell you. I — ” She seemed somehow embarrassed. "There is a message.” "A what?” "Look at Bear Rock, Peter, under the bear’s jaw on the left side.” With that, she was gonje. The cold water sivirled around his legs as he traced with one finger the painstakingly chiseled message she had left; a little-girl message in a symbol far older than either of them.