Quiet being restored, Hathorne proceeded:  “Tell us, have you not had visible appearances, more than what is common in nature?”—­“I have none, nor never had in my life.”—­“Do you think these suffer voluntary or involuntary?”—­“I cannot tell.”—­“That is strange:  every one can judge.”—­“I must be silent.”—­“They accuse you of hurting them; and, if you think it is not unwillingly, but by design, you must look upon them as murderers.”—­“I cannot tell what to think of it.”  This answer was considered as very aspersive in its bearing upon the witnesses, and she was charged with having called them murderers.  Being hard of hearing, she did not always take in the whole import of questions put to her.  She denied that she said she thought them murderers; all she said, and that she stood to to the last, was that she could not tell what to make of their conduct.  Finally, Hathorne put this question, and called for an answer, “Do you think these suffer against their wills or not?” She answered, “I do not think these suffer against their wills.”  To this point she was not afraid or unwilling to go, in giving an opinion of the conduct of the accusing girls.  Infirm, half deaf, cross-questioned, circumvented, surrounded with folly, uproar, and outrage, as she was, they could not intimidate her to say less, or entrap her to say more.

Then another line of criminating questions was started by the magistrate:  “Why did you never visit these afflicted persons?”—­“Because I was afraid I should have fits too.”  On every motion of her body, “fits followed upon the complainants, abundantly and very frequently.”  As soon as order was again restored, Hathorne, being, as he always was, wholly convinced of the reality of the sufferings of the “afflicted children,” addressed her thus, “Is it not an unaccountable case, that, when you are examined, these persons are afflicted?” Seeing that he and the whole assembly put faith in the accusers, her only reply was, “I have got nobody to look to but God.”  As she uttered these words, she naturally attempted to raise her hands, whereupon “the afflicted persons were seized with violent fits of torture.”  After silence was again restored, the magistrate pressed his questions still closer.  “Do you believe these afflicted persons are bewitched?” She answered, “I do think they are.”  It will be noticed that there was this difference between Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey:  The latter was an utter heretic on the point of the popular faith respecting witchcraft; she did not believe that there were any witches, and she looked upon the declarations and actions of the “afflicted children” as the ravings of “distracted persons.”  The former seems to have held the opinions of the day, and had no disbelief in witchcraft:  she was willing to admit that the children were bewitched; but she knew her own innocence, and nothing could move her from the consciousness of it.  Mr. Hathorne continued, “When this witchcraft came upon the stage, there was no suspicion of Tituba, Mr. Parris’s