The industry that had ransacked the traditions and collected the scandal of the whole country, far and near, for stories that were brought in evidence against all the prisoners, had not failed to pick up this choice bit against Corey.  The only reason why it had not before been brought out was because he had not been on trial.  The man who died with “clodders of blood about his heart,” seventeen years before, was an unfortunate and worthless person, who had incurred punishment for his misconduct while a servant on Corey’s farm, and afterwards at the hands of his own family:  and he does not appear to have mended his morals upon passing into the spiritual world; for the statement of his ghost to Ann Putnam, that the jury had found Corey guilty of murder, and that the Court was hindered by some enchantment from proceeding against him, is disproved by the record which is—­as has been mentioned in the First Part, vol. i. p. 185—­that the man was carried back to his house by Corey’s wife, and died there some time after; and the Court did no more than fine Corey for the punishment he had inflicted upon him while in his service, and which the evidence showed was repeated by his parents after his return to his own family.

Thomas Putnam’s letter and Ann’s vision were the last things of the kind that occurred.  The delusion was approaching its close, and the people were beginning to be restored to their senses.

When it became known that Corey’s resolution was likely to hold out, and that no torments or cruelties of any kind could subdue his firm and invincible spirit, Mr. Noyes hurried a special meeting of his church on a week-day, and had the satisfaction of dealing the same awful doom upon him as upon Rebecca Nurse.  The entry in the record of the First Church is as follows:—­

“Sept. 18, G. Corey was excommunicated:  the cause of it was, that he being accused and indicted for the sin of witchcraft, he refused to plead, and so incurred the sentence and penalty of pain fort dure; being undoubtedly either guilty of the sin of witchcraft, or of throwing himself upon sudden and certain death, if he were otherwise innocent.”

This attempt to introduce a form of argument into a church act of excommunication is a slight but significant symptom of its having become felt that the breath of reason had begun to raise a ripple upon the surface of the public mind.  It increased slowly, but steadily to a gale that beat with severity upon Mr. Noyes and all his fellow-persecutors to their dying day.

After the executions, on the 22d of September, the Court adjourned to meet some weeks subsequently; and it was, no doubt, their expectation to continue from month to month to hold sessions, and supply, each time, new cart-loads of victims to the hangman.  But a sudden collapse took place in the machinery, and they met no more.  The executive authority intervened, and their functions ceased.  The curtain