judgment.”  Sarah Churchill charged him with having hurt her; and the magistrates, pushing her on to make further charges, said to her, “Did he not appear on the other side of the river, and hurt you?  Did not you see him?” She answered, “Yes, he did.”  Then, turning to him, the magistrates said, “There, she accuseth you to your face:  she chargeth you that you hurt her twice.”—­“It is not true.  What would you have me say?  I never wronged no man in word nor deed.”—­“Is it no harm to afflict these?”—­“I never did it.”—­“But how comes it to be in your appearance?”—­“The Devil can take any likeness.”—­“Not without their consent.”  Jacobs rejected the imputation.  “You tax me for a wizard:  you may as well tax me for a buzzard.  I have done no harm.”  Churchill said, “I know you lived a wicked life.”  Jacobs, turning to the magistrates, said, “Let her make it out.”  The magistrates asked her, “Doth he ever pray in his family?” She replied, “Not unless by himself.”  The magistrates, addressing him:  “Why do you not pray in your family?”—­“I cannot read.”—­“Well, but you may pray for all that.  Can you say the Lord’s Prayer?  Let us hear you.”  The reporter, Mr. Parris, says, “He missed in several parts of it, and could not repeat it right after many trials.”  The magistrates, addressing her, said, “Were you not frighted, Sarah Churchill, when the representation of your master came to you?”—­“Yes.”  Jacobs exclaimed, “Well, burn me or hang me, I will stand in the truth of Christ:  I know nothing of it.”  In answer to an inquiry from the magistrates, he denied having done any thing to get his son George or grand-daughter Margaret to “sign the book.”

The appearance of the old man, his intrepid bearing, and the stamp of conscious innocence on all he said, probably produced some impression on the magistrates, as they did not come to any decision, but adjourned the examination to the next day.  The girls then came down from the village in full force, determined to put him through.  When he was brought in, they accordingly, all at once, “fell into the most grievous fits and screechings.”  When they sufficiently came to, the magistrates turned to the girls:  “Is this the man that hurts you?” They severally answered,—­Abigail Williams:  “This is the man,” and fell into a violent fit.  Ann Putnam:  “This is the man.  He hurts me, and brings the book to me, and would have me write in the book, and said, if I would write in it, I should be as well as his grand-daughter.”  Mercy Lewis, after much interruptions by fits:  “This is the man:  he almost kills me.”  Elizabeth Hubbard:  “He never hurt me till to-day, when he came upon the table.”  Mary Walcot, after much interruption by fits:  “This is the man:  he used to come with two staves, and beat me with one of them.”  After all this, the magistrates, thinking he could deny it no longer, turn to him, “What do you say?  Are you not a witch?” “No:  I know it not, if I were to die presently.”  Mercy Lewis advanced towards him, but, as soon as she got near, “fell into great fits.”—­“What do you say to this?” cried the magistrates.  “Why, it is false.  I know not of it any more than the child that was born to-night.”  The reporter says, “Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams had each of them a pin stuck in their hands, and they said it was this old Jacobs.”  He was committed to prison.