squeezed.  She threw the handkerchief on the table; and they said, “There are the shapes of Daniel Eames and Captain Floyd [two persons then in prison on the charge of witchcraft] sitting on her handkerchief.”  Mary Warren enacted the part of being dragged against her will under the table by an invisible hand, from whose grasp she was at once released, upon the prisoner’s being made to touch her.  Notwithstanding all this, she protested her innocence, and was remanded to jail.  On the 30th, she was brought out again.  In the mean while, six had been executed.  The usual means were employed to break her down; but all that was gained was, that she owned she had expressed her indignation at the conduct of the afflicted, and was much excited against them “for bringing her kindred out, and she did wish them ill:  and, her spirit being raised, she did pinch her hands together, and she knew not but that the Devil might take that advantage; but it was the Devil, and not she, that afflicted them.”  This was the only concession she would make; and they were puzzled to determine whether it was a confession, or not,—­it having rather the appearance of clearing herself from all implication with the Devil, and leaving him on their hands—­at any rate, they concluded to regard it in the latter sense; and she was duly convicted, and sentenced to death.  Sir William Phips ordered a reprieve; and, after she had been thirteen weeks in prison, he directed her to be discharged on the ground of insufficient evidence.  This, I think, is the only instance of a special pardon granted during the proceedings.

Samuel Wardwell, like most of the accused belonging to Andover, had originally joined the crowd of the confessors; but he was too much of a man to remain in that company.  He took back his confession, and met his death.  While he was speaking to the people, at the gallows, declaring his innocency, a puff of tobacco-smoke from the pipe of the executioner, as Calef informs us, “coming in his face, interrupted his discourse:  those accusers said that the Devil did hinder him with smoke.”  The wicked creatures followed their victims to the last with their malignant outrages.  The cart that carried the prisoners, on this occasion, to the hill, “was for some time at a set:  the afflicted and others said that the Devil hindered it,” &c.

The route by which they were conveyed from the jail, which was at the north corner of Federal and St. Peter’s Streets, to the gallows, must have been a cruelly painful and fatiguing one, particularly to infirm and delicate persons, as many of them were.  It was through St. Peter’s, up the whole length of Essex, and thence probably along Boston Street, far towards Aborn Street; for the hill could only be ascended from that direction.  It must have been a rough and jolting operation; and it is not strange that the cart got “set.”  It seems that the prisoners were carried in a single cart.  It was a large one, provided probably for the occasion; and it is not unlikely that the reason why some who had been condemned were not executed, was that the cart could not hold them all at once.  They were executed, one in June, five in July, five in August, and eight in September, with the intention, no doubt, by taking them in instalments, to extend the acts of the tragedy, from month to month, indefinitely.