large families of children.  The magistrate had heard some malignant gossip of this kind, and he asked, “How came you sick? for there is an odd discourse of that in the mouths of many.”  She replied that she suffered from weakness of stomach.  He inquired, more specifically, “Have you no wounds?” Her answer was, that her ailments and weaknesses, all her bodily infirmities, were the natural effects of what she had experienced in a long life.  “I have none but old age.”—­“You do know whether you are guilty, and have familiarity with the Devil; and now, when you are here present, to see such a thing as these testify,—­a black man whispering in your ear, and birds about you,—­what do you say to it?”—­“It is all false:  I am clear.”—­“Possibly, you may apprehend you are no witch; but have you not been led aside by temptations that way?”—­“I have not.”  At this point, it almost seems that Hathorne was yielding to the moral effect of the evidence she bore in her deportment and language, the impress of conscious innocence in her countenance, and the manifestation of true Christian purity and integrity in her whole manner and bearing.  Instead of pressing her with further interrogatories, he gave way to an expression, in the form of a soliloquy or ejaculation, “What a sad thing is it, that a church-member here, and now another of Salem, should thus be accused and charged!” Upon hearing this rather ambiguous expression of the magistrate, Mrs. Pope fell into a grievous fit.

Mrs. Pope was the wife of Joseph Pope, living with his mother, the widow Gertrude Pope, on the farm shown on the map.  She had followed up the meetings of the circle, been a constant witness of the sufferings of the “afflicted children,” and attended all the public examinations, until her nervous system was excited beyond restraint, and for a while she went into fits and her imagination was bewildered.  She acted with the accusers, and participated in their sufferings.  On some occasions, her conduct was wild and extravagant to the highest degree.  At the examination of Martha Corey, she was conspicuous for the violence of her actions.  In the midst of the proceedings, and in the presence of the magistrates and hundreds of people, she threw her muff at the prisoner; and, that missing, pulled off her shoe, and, more successful this time, hit her square on the head.  Hers seems, however, to have been a case of mere delusion, amounting to temporary insanity.  That it was not deliberate and cold-blooded imposture is rendered probable by the fact, that she was rescued from the hallucination, and, with her husband, among the foremost to deplore and denounce the whole affair.  But, when a woman of her position acted in this manner, on such an occasion, and then went into convulsions, and the whole company of afflicted persons joined in, the confusion, tumult, and frightfulness of the scene can hardly be imagined, certainly it cannot be described in words.