Abraham Walcot testifies, that, “Tuesday night last was a week, I lodged at Giles Corey’s house, which night John Procter’s house was damaged by fire; and Giles Corey went to bed before nine o’clock, and rose about sunrise again, and could not have gone out of the house but I should have heard him; and it must have been impossible that he should have gone to Procter’s house that night; for he cannot in a long time go afoot, and, for his horse-kind, they were all in the woods.  And further testifieth, that said Corey came home very weary from work, and went to bed the rather.”  His wife testified that he was in bed from nine o’clock until sunrise.

John Parker, one of Corey’s four sons-in-law, testified as follows:  “I being at work with my father, Goodman Corey, the day Goodman Procter’s house was on fire.  I going home with my father the night before, he complained that he was very weary, and said he would go to bed.  I did, on our way going, ask him whether or no he would eat his supper:  my father answered me again, no, he could not eat any thing that night; and so went to bed, and so I left him abed.  And, the next morning, my father came to me about sun-rising, and asked me to go with Abraham Walcot to fetch a load of hay; and my father said he would try whether or not he could cart up a load of peas.  I do also testify that he had no horse-kind near at home at that time.”

John Gloyd, the hired man, with whom he had the lawsuit that had been settled a day or two before by arbitrators, testified, in corroboration of Parker, and to show that the latter could not have had any thing to do with the fire, that he slept in the same room with said Parker that night, and that he came to bed between nine and ten o’clock in the evening, and never rose until the break of day.  Gloyd’s wife testified to the same effect.  There turned out to be no evidence against Corey whatever, but abundant proof of his innocence.  The hard-working, “weary” old man was triumphantly acquitted.  He thought, however, from this high-handed and utterly groundless attempt to wrong and ruin him, and from calumnious general statements that had been made against him in the course of the trial, that it was time to put a stop to the malignant and mischievous slanders which had been current in the neighborhood.  He instituted prosecutions of Procter and others for defamation, and recovered against them all.  After this, we hear no more of him until he experienced religion and was received into the First Church.  Whether he and Procter became reconciled again is not known.  Probably they did; for they seem to have had points of attraction, and each of them traits of kind-heartedness and generosity, under a rather rough exterior.  The manner in which they bore themselves in their last hours is a matter of history, and stamps them both with true manliness.