is coming to Mary Walcot!” and Mary went into her fit.  The magistrate, in consternation, appealed to him:  “How can you be clear,” when your appearance is thus seen producing such effects before our eyes?  Then the children went into fits all together, and “hallooed” at the top of their voices, and “shouted greatly.”  The magistrate then brought up the confession of his wife against him, and expostulated with him for not confessing; the afflicted, in the mean while, bringing the whole machinery of their convulsions, shrieks, and uproar to bear against him:  but he calmly, and in brief terms, denied it.

The circle of accusing girls seems to have been a receptacle, into which all the scandal, gossip, and defamation of the surrounding country was emptied.  Some one had told them that William Hobbs was not a regular attendant at meeting.  They passed it on to the magistrate, and he put this question to the accused:  “When were you at any public religious meeting?” He replied, “Not a pretty while.”—­“Why so?”—­“Because I was not well:  I had a distemper that none knows.”  The magistrate said, “Can you act witchcraft here, and, by casting your eyes, turn folks into fits?”—­“You may judge your pleasure.  My soul is clear.”—­“Do you not see you hurt these by your look?”—­“No:  I do not know it.”  After another display of awful sufferings, caused, as they protested, by the mere look of Hobbs, the magistrate, with triumphant confidence, again put it home to him, “Can you now deny it?” He answered, “I can deny it to my dying day.”  The magistrate inquired of him for what reason he withdrew from the room whenever the Scriptures were read in his family.  He plumply denied it.  Nathaniel Ingersoll and Thomas Haynes testified that his daughter had told them so.  The confessions of his wife and daughter were over and over again brought up against him, but to no effect.  “Who do you worship?” said the magistrate.  “I hope I worship God only.”—­“Where?”—­“In my heart.”  The examination failed to confound or embarrass him in the least.  He could not be drawn into the expression of any of the feelings which the conduct of his graceless and depraved daughter or his weak and wretched wife must have excited.  He quietly protested that he knew nothing about witchcraft; and, towards the close, with solemn earnestness of utterance, declared that his innocence was known to the “great God in heaven.”

He was committed for trial.  All that the documents in existence inform us further, in relation to William Hobbs, is that he remained in prison until the 14th of the next December, when two of his neighbors, John Nichols and Joseph Towne, in some way succeeded in getting him bailed out; they giving bonds in the sum of two hundred pounds for his appearance at the sessions of the Court the next month.  But it was not, even then, thought wholly safe to have him come in; and the fine was incurred.  He appeared at the term in May, the fine was remitted, and he discharged by proclamation.  On the 26th of March, 1714, he gave evidence in a case of commonage rights.  He was then seventy-two years of age.  Of his wife and daughter, I shall again have occasion to speak.