The marvels of necromancy and magic had been kept perpetually before it.  She had been living in the invisible world, with a constant sense of supernaturalism surrounding her.  Unconsciously, perhaps, the passions, prejudices, irritations, and animosities, to which she had been subject, became mixed with the vagaries of an excited imagination; and, laid open to the inroads of delusion as her mind had long been by perpetual tamperings with spiritual ideas and phantoms, she may have lost the balance of reason and sanity.  This, added to a morbid sensibility, probably gave a deep intensity to her voice, action, and countenance.  The effect upon the excited multitude must have been very great.  Although she lived to realize the utter falseness of all her statements, her monstrous fictions were felt by her, at the time, to be a reality.

In concluding his report of this examination, Mr. Parris says, “By reason of great noises by the afflicted and many speakers, many things are pretermitted.”  He was probably quite willing to avoid telling the whole story of the disgraceful and shocking scenes enacted in the meeting-house that day.  Deodat Lawson was present during the earlier part of the proceedings.  He says that Mr. Hale began with prayer; that the prisoner “pleaded her innocency with earnestness;” that, at the opening, some of the girls, Mary Walcot among them, declared that the prisoner had never hurt them.  Presently, however, Mary Walcot screamed out that she was bitten, and charged it upon Rebecca Nurse.  The marks of teeth were produced on her wrist.  Lawson says, “It was so disposed that I had not leisure to attend the whole time of examination.”  The meaning is, I suppose, that he desired to withdraw into the neighboring fields to con over his manuscript, and make himself more able to perform with effect the part he was to act that afternoon.  “There was once,” he says, “such an hideous screech and noise (which I heard as I walked at a little distance from the meeting-house) as did amaze me; and some that were within told me the whole assembly was struck with consternation, and they were afraid that those that sat next to them were under the influence of witchcraft.”  The whole congregation was in an uproar, every one afflicted by and affrighting every other, amid a universal outcry of terror and horror.

As it was a part of the policy of the managers of the business to utterly overwhelm the influence of all natural sentiment in the community, they coupled with this proceeding against a venerable and infirm great-grandmother, another of the same kind against a little child.  Immediately after the examination of Rebecca Nurse was concluded, Dorcas, a daughter of Sarah Good, was brought before the magistrates.  She was between four and five years old.  Lawson says, “The child looked hale and well as other children.”  A warrant had been issued for her apprehension, the day before, on complaint of Edward and Jonathan Putnam.  Herrick the marshal, who