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"Has it ever occurred to you that Alizon might be addicted to these practices?" pursued Potts, "and that she obtained her extraordinary and otherwise unaccountable beauty by some magical process some charm some diabolical unguent prepared, as the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seals, the singularly learned Lord Bacon, declares, from fat of unbaptised babes, compounded with henbane, hemlock, mandrake, moonshade, and other terrible ingredients.
The "base- born" Innocent, nameless, and unbaptised, and therefore shadowed by the stupid scandal of commonplace convention, had given the "home" its homelike quality her pretty idealistic fancies about the old sixteenth-century knight "Sieur Amadis" had invested the place with a touch of romance and poetry which it would hardly have possessed with-out her her gentle ways, her care of the flowers and the animals, and the never-wearying delight she had taken in the household affairs all her part in the daily life of the farm had been as necessary to happiness as the mastership of Hugo Jocelyn himself and without her nothing seemed the same.
"A sacrifice of whom?" "An unbaptised babe, stolen from its sleeping mother's breast," rejoined another. "Mother Demdike has often played that trick before ho! ho!" "Peace!" thundered the hag "It is no babe I am about to kill, but a full-grown maid ay, and one of rarest beauty, too. What think ye of Alizon Device?" "Thy grand-daughter!" cried several voices, in surprise.
They have long sought, and they have long sued, and they had the power to prevail against my prayers at last. They have ta'en him away; the flower is plucked from among the weeds, and the dove is slain amid a flock of ravens. They came with shout, and they came with song, and they spread the charm, and they placed the spell, and the baptised brow has been bowed down to the unbaptised hand.
In the first circle are the whole unbaptised world heathens and infants melancholy, though not tormented. Here also is found the Elysium of Virgil, whose Charon and other infernal beings are among the agents of torment. With the centre of the globe commences the antipodean attraction of its opposite side, together with a rocky ascent out of it, through a huge ravine.
We might stomach a God who would save orthodox burglars along with orthodox bishops, but not one who saved unbaptised infants and adults of unsound doctrine. Dear, dear, yes! We must have a God with a little human spite in Him or He seems to be spineless." "A hopeless cynic," declared the soft voice of the Catholic "it's the Unitarianism working out of him, mind you!"
The amiable Presbyterian, not relishing this, still amiably threw the gauntlet down to Father Riley, demanding the Catholic view of the future of unbaptised children. The speech of the latter was a mellow joy a south breeze of liquid consonants and lilting vowels finely articulated.
In a sad voice, with lowered eyes and quivering lips, she related her plaintive little history, disclosing her unbaptised shame, her unowned parentage, her desperately forlorn and lonely condition. And Robin listened amazed and perplexed. "It seems to be all my fault," concluded Innocent, sorrowfully "and yet it is not really so!
Yet even these accepted the new teaching with eagerness. A curious evidence of this was given by a deputation which came one day to Opotiki from a village 30 miles in the interior. The object of these strangers was not blankets or powder, but simply to ask the white man whether the words of the burial service might be read over the unbaptised!
I must try to see myself as I am, unbaptised, nameless, forsaken! And if there is anything to be done with this wretched little self of mine, it is I that must do it. With God's help!" She sighed, and her lips moved softly again in the last words, "With God's help!" He said nothing, and she waited a moment as if expecting him to speak.
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