sin.”  She “found fault” with the language, and criticised it.  He thought it was all right!  The characteristic spirit of the old man was roused most strikingly by one of the charges.  Bibber and others testified that Corey had said he had seen the Devil in the shape of a black hog and was very much frightened.  He could not stand under the imputation of cowardice, and lost sight of every other element in the accusation but that.  The magistrate asked, “What did you see in the cow-house?  Why do you deny it?”—­“I saw nothing but my cattle.”—­“(Divers witnessed that he told them he was frighted.)”—­“Well, what do you say to these witnesses?  What was it frighted you?”—­“I do not know that ever I spoke the word in my life.”

But while his character retained its manliness, and his soul was truly insensible to fear, he was very much oppressed and distressed by his situation.  The share he had, with two of his sons-in-law, in bringing his wife into her awful condition, and in driving on the public infatuation at the beginning, was more than he could endure to think of, and he was charged with having meditated suicide.  Perhaps he had already formed the purpose afterwards carried into effect, and may have dropped expressions, under that thought, which to others might appear to indicate a design of self-destruction.  He was accused of having said that “he would make away with himself, and charge his death upon his son.”  His sons-in-law, Crosby and Parker, were acting with the crowd that were pursuing him to his death.  Little did it enter the imagination of any one then, that there was a method by which he could “make away with himself,” leaving the entire act of the destruction of his life upon his persecutors, and the sin to be apportioned between him and them by the All-wise and All-just.

Abigail Hobbs had been a reckless vagrant creature, wandering through the woods at night like a half-deranged person; but she had wit enough to see that there was safety in confession.  She pretended to have committed, by witchcraft, crimes enough to have hanged her a dozen times.  If she had stood to her confession, we should have heard of her no more.

Bridget Bishop’s examination filled the intervals of time while Mary Warren was being carried out of the meeting-house to recover from her fits.  Both Parris and Ezekiel Cheever took minutes of it, from which the substance is gathered as follows:—­

On her coming in, the afflicted persons, at the same moment, severally fell into fits, and were dreadfully tormented.  Hathorne addressed her, calling upon her to give an account of the witchcrafts she was “conversant in.”  She replied, “I take all this people to witness that I am clear.”  He then asked the children, “Hath this woman hurt you?” They all cried out that she had.  The magistrate continued, “You are here accused by four or five:  what do you say to it?”—­“I never saw these persons before, nor I never[A] was in this place before.  I never did hurt them in my life.”