that in every motion of her head they were tortured.  Marshal Herrick, as usual, put in his oar, and volunteered charges against her.  She bore herself well through the shocking scene, and did not shrink, at its close, from expressing her unbelief of the whole thing:  “I do not know whether there be any witches or no.”  When she was removed from the place of examination, the accusers all had fits, and broke forth in outcries of agony.  After being taken out, one of the constables in charge of her asked her if she was not troubled to see the afflicted persons so tormented; and she replied, “No.”  In answer to further questions, she indicated that she could not tell what to think of them, and did not concern herself about them at all.

Giles Corey, Bridget Bishop, Abigail Hobbs, together with Mary Warren, were duly committed to prison.

Two days after, April 21, warrants were issued “against William Hobbs, husbandman, and Deliverance his wife; Nehemiah Abbot, Jr., weaver; Mary Easty, the wife of Isaac Easty; and Sarah Wilds, the wife of John Wilds,—­all of the town of Topsfield, or Ipswich; and Edward Bishop, husbandman, and Sarah his wife, of Salem Village; and Mary Black, a negro of Lieutenant Nathaniel Putnam’s, of Salem Village also; and Mary English, the wife of Philip English, merchant in Salem.”  All of them were to be delivered to the magistrates for examination at the house of Lieutenant Nathaniel Ingersoll, at about ten o’clock the next morning, in Salem Village; and were brought in accordingly.

What the papers on file enable us to glean of these nine persons is substantially as follows:  William Hobbs was about fifty years of age, and one of the earliest settlers of the Village, although his residence was on the territory afterwards included in Topsfield.  His daughter Abigail, of whom I have just spoken, appears from all the accounts to have acted at this stage of the transaction a most wicked part, ready to do all the mischief in her power, and allowing herself to be used to any extent to fasten the imputation of witchcraft upon others.  Several persons testified that, long before, she had boasted that she was not afraid of any thing, “for she had sold herself body and soul to the Old Boy;” one witness testified, that, “some time last winter, I was discoursing with Abigail Hobbs about her wicked carriages and disobedience to her father and mother, and she told me she did not care what anybody said to her, for she had seen the Devil, and had made a covenant or bargain with him;” another, Margaret Knight, testified, that, about a year before, “Abigail Hobbs and her mother were at my father’s house, and Abigail Hobbs said to me, ‘Margaret, are you baptized?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’  Then said she, ’My mother is not baptized, but I will baptize her;’ and immediately took water, and sprinkled in her mother’s face, and said she did baptize her ‘in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.’”