“Note that not one of the sufferers was afflicted during her
     examination, after once she began to confess, though they
     were tormented before.”

She was subsequently examined in the prison several times, falling occasionally into fits, and exhibiting the appearance of a long-continued conflict with Satan, who was supposed to be resisting her inclination to confess, and holding her with violence to the contract she had made with him.  The magistrates and ministers beheld with amazement and awe what they believed to be precisely a similar scene to that described by the evangelists when the Devil strove against the power of the Saviour and his disciples, and would not quit his hold upon the young man, but “threw him down, and tare him.”  At length, as in that case, Satan was overcome.  After a protracted, most violent, and terrible contest, Mary Warren got released from his clutches, and made a full and circumstantial confession.

Whoever studies carefully the account of Mary Warren’s successive examinations can hardly question, I think, that she acted a part, and acted it with wonderful cunning, skill, and effect.

This examination, beginning on Tuesday, the 19th of April, continued after she was committed to prison in Salem, at the jail there, for several days, and was renewed at intervals until the middle of May.  After she had thoroughly broken away from Satan, she revealed all that she had seen and heard while associating with him and his confederate subjects:  her testimony was implicitly received, and it dealt death and destruction in all directions.  It is a circumstance strongly confirming this view, that Mary Warren was soon released from confinement.  It was the general practice to keep those, who confessed, in prison, to retain in that way power over them, and prevent their recanting their confessions.  She is found, by the papers on file, to have acted afterwards, as a capital witness, against ten persons, all of whom were convicted, and seven executed.  Besides these, she testified, with the appearance of animosity and vindictiveness, against her master John Procter, and her mistress his wife; thus contributing to secure the conviction of both, and the death of the former.  In how many more cases she figured in the same character and to the same effect is unknown, as the papers in reference to only a very small proportion of them have come down to us.  The interpretation I give to the course of Mary Warren exhibits her guilt, and that of those participating in the stratagem, as of the deepest and blackest dye.  But it seems to be the only one which a scrutiny of the details of her examinations, and of the facts of the case, allows us to receive.  The effect was most decisive.  The course of the accusing children in crying out against one of their own number satisfied the public, and convinced still more the magistrates, that they were truthful, honest, and upright.  They had before given evidence that they paid no regard to