For all that is known of the case of Nehemiah Abbot, we are indebted to Hutchinson, who had Parris’s minutes of the examination before him.  Hutchinson says, that, of “near an hundred” whose examinations he had seen, he was the only one who, having been brought before the magistrates, was finally dismissed by them.  Perhaps even this case was not an exception:  for a document on file shows that a person named Abbot of the same locality was subsequently arrested and imprisoned; but unfortunately the Christian name has been obliterated, or from some cause is wanting.  It seems, from Hutchinson’s minutes, that he protested his innocence in manly and firm declarations.  Mary Walcot testified that she had seen his shape.  Ann Putnam cried out that she saw him “upon the beam.”  The magistrates told him that his guilt was certainly proved, and that, if he would find mercy of God, he must confess.  “I speak before God,” he answered, “that I am clear from this accusation.”—­“What, in all respects?”—­“Yes, in all respects.”  The girls were struck with dumbness; and Ann Putnam, re-affirming that he was the man that hurt her, “was taken with a fit.”  Mary Walcot began to waver in her confidence, and Mercy Lewis said, “It is not the man.”  This unprecedented variance in the testimony of the girls brought matters to a stand; and he was sent out for a time, while others were examined:—­

“When he was brought in again, by reason of much people, and many in the windows, so that the accusers could not have a clear view of him, he was ordered to be abroad, and the accusers to go forth to him, and view him in the light, which they did in the presence of the magistrates and many others, discoursed quietly with him, one and all acquitting him; but yet said he was like that man, but he had not the wen they saw in his apparition.  Note, he was a hilly-faced man, and stood shaded by reason of his own hair; so that for a time he seemed to some bystanders and observers to be considerably like the person the afflicted did describe.”

Such is Parris’s statement, as quoted by Hutchinson.  What was the real cause or motive of this discrepancy among the witnesses does not appear.  The facts, that at first they went into fits in beholding him, were all struck dumb for a while, and Ann Putnam saw him on the beam, were likely to have an unfavorable effect upon the minds of the people, and threatened to explode the delusion.  But Ann, with a quickness of wit that never failed to meet any emergency, when Mercy Lewis said it was not the man, cried out in a fit, “Did you put a mist before my eyes?” She conveyed the idea that the power of Satan blinded her, and caused her to mistake the man.  This answered the purpose; and, although Abbot got clear, for the time at least, all were more than ever convinced that the Evil One, in misleading Ann, had shown his hand on the occasion.

The examination of Sarah Wildes had no peculiar features.  The afflicted children and Goody Bibber saw her apparition sitting on the beam while she was bodily present at the bar, and went through their usual fits and evolutions.  She maintained her innocence with dignity and firmness; and the magistrate, prejudging the case against her, rebuked her obstinacy in not confessing, in his accustomed manner.