Hathorne said, “Is this true, Goody Nurse?” She denied that she had ever hurt them or any one else in her life.  Hathorne repeated, “You see these accuse you:  is it true?” She answered, “No.”  He again put the question, “Are you an innocent person relating to this witchcraft?” It seems, from his manner, that he was beginning really to doubt whether she might not be innocent; and perhaps the feeling of the multitude was yielding in her favor.

Here Thomas Putnam’s wife cried out, “Did you not bring the black man with you?  Did you not bid me tempt God, and die?  How oft have you eat and drank your own damnation?” This sudden outbreak, from such a source, accompanied with the wild and apparently supernatural energy and uncontrollable vehemence with which the words were uttered, roused the multitude to the utmost pitch of horror; and the prisoner seems to have been shocked at the dreadful exhibition of madness in the woman and in the assembly.  Releasing her hands from confinement, she spread them out towards heaven, and exclaimed, “O Lord, help me!” Instantly, the whole company of the afflicted children “were grievously vexed.”  After a while, the tumult subsided, and Hathorne again addressed her, “Do you not see what a solemn condition these are in?  When your hands are loosed, the persons are afflicted.”  Then Mary Walcot and Elizabeth Hubbard came forward, and accused her.  Hathorne again addressed her, “Here are these two grown persons now accuse.  What say you?  Do not you see these afflicted persons, and hear them accuse you?” She answered, “The Lord knows I have not hurt them.  I am an innocent person.”  Hathorne continued, “It is very awful to all to see these agonies, and you, an old professor, thus charged with contracting with the Devil by the effects of it, and yet to see you stand with dry eyes where there are so many wet.”  She answered, “You do not know my heart.”  Hathorne, “You would do well, if you are guilty, to confess, and give glory to God.”—­“I am as clear as the child unborn.”  Hathorne continued, “What uncertainty there may be in apparitions, I know not:  yet this with me strikes hard upon you, that you are, at this very present, charged with familiar spirits,—­this is your bodily person they speak to; they say now they see these familiar spirits come to your bodily person.  Now, what do you say to that?”—­“I have none, sir.”—­“If you have, confess, and give glory to God.  I pray God clear you, if you be innocent, and, if you are guilty, discover you; and therefore give me an upright answer.  Have you any familiarity with these spirits?”—­“No:  I have none but with God alone.”  It looks as if again the magistrate began to open his mind to a fair view of the case.  He seems to have sought satisfaction in reference to all the charges that had been made against her.  She was suffering from infirmities of body, the result not only of age, but of the burdens of life often pressing down the physical frame, particularly of those who have borne