After the “afflicted” had been sent out of the room, there was testimony to show that Mr. Burroughs had given proof of physical strength, which, in a man of his small stature, was sure evidence that he was in league with the Devil.  Many marvellous statements were made to this effect, some of the most extravagant of which he denied.  He undoubtedly was a person of great strength.  He had cultivated muscular exercise and development while an undergraduate at Cambridge, and was early celebrated as a gymnast.  After a while, the accusers and afflicted were again brought in.  Abigail Hobbs testified that she was present at a “witch meeting, in the field near Mr. Parris’s house,” in which Mr. Burroughs acted a conspicuous part.  Mary Warren swore that “Mr. Burroughs had a trumpet which he blew to summon the witches to their feasts” and other meetings “near Mr. Parris’s house.”  This trumpet had a sound that reached over the country far and wide, sending its blasts to Andover, and wakening its echoes along the Merrimack, to Cape Ann, and the uttermost settlements everywhere; so that the witches, hearing it, would mount their brooms, and alight, in a moment, in Mr. Parris’s orchard, just to the north and west of the parsonage; but its sound was not heard by any other ears than those of confederates with Satan.  While the girls were giving their testimony, every once in a while they would be dreadfully choked, appearing to be in the last stages of suffocation and strangulation; and, coming to, at intervals, would charge it upon Burroughs or other witches, calling them by name; generally, however, confining their selection to persons already apprehended, and not bringing in others until measures were matured.  Mr. Burroughs was committed for trial.

The examination of Mr. Burroughs presented a spectacle, all things considered, of rare interest and curiosity,—­the grave dignity of the magistrates; the plain, dark figure of the prisoner; the half-crazed, half-demoniac aspect of the girls; the wild, excited crowd; the horror, rage, and pallid exasperation of Lawson, Goodman Fuller and others, also of the relatives and friends of Burroughs’s two former wives, as the deep damnation of their taking off and the secrets of their bloody graves were being brought to light; and the child on the stand telling her awful tale of ghosts in winding-sheets, with napkins round their heads, pointing to their death-wounds, and saying that “their blood did cry for vengeance” upon their murderer.  The prisoner stands alone:  all were raving around him, while he is amazed; astounded at such folly and wrong in others, and humbly sensible of his own unworthiness; bowed down under the mysterious Providence, that permitted such things for a season, yet strong and steadfast in conscious innocence and uprightness.