Of course there could be no question of such correction as would have fallen to the lot of any ordinary offender. There could be no such thing as putting a _Ladd_ in the stocks. The regular machinery of village law rested quiescent. Equally of course, Mistress Mehitable would do nothing in anger. She was humiliated before the whole village, in a manner that could never be forgotten or wiped out. But her first feeling and her last feeling were alike of sorrow only. She would do her duty because Winthrop's child must be saved. But she had no proud consciousness of virtue in doing it. First, she attempted to explain to Barbara the depth, quality, and significance of her sin, its possible influence upon the ethics of Second Westings if allowed to go unpunished, the special variety of inherited evil which it revealed in her nature, and her stupendous need of having this evil eradicated by devotedly merciless correction. After the first few words of this exhortation, Barbara heard no more. She was at all times fiercely impatient of criticism, and now, being determined not to fly into a fury and further complicate her predicament, she shut her eyes, inwardly closed her ears, and concentrated her imagination on memories of the longed-for plantation by the Pawtuxet. This concentration gave her vivid little face an air of quietude, subjection, and voiceless sorrow, which Aunt Hitty was glad to construe as repentance. But it earned no mitigation of punishment. For one whole week Barbara was a prisoner in her room, eating her heart out in hatred of the stupidity and injustice of life. Then came around, at last, another Sabbath. Barbara was taken to church. There her proud soul was affronted by a public rebuke from the pastor, who exhorted her from the pulpit, contented the congregation by a rehearsal of her punishment, and held her up as an example to the other children of the village. Barbara listened with shut eyes and white lips, her heart bursting with rage. She ached to kill him, to kill her aunt, to annihilate Second Westings--saving only the animals, old Debby, Mercy Chapman, Doctor John and Doctor Jim. But when the good divine went on to say that her discipline would be concluded with a wholesome chastisement on the morrow, in the privacy of the house to which her sinful conduct had brought grief,--then, indeed, her heart stood still. She felt a great calmness come over her. She made up her mind to escape by her window that very evening and drown herself in the lake. If life contained such horrors she would have done with it.