An examination of the confessions shows, that, when accused persons made up their minds to confess, they saw, that, to make their safety secure, it was necessary to go the whole length of the popular superstition and fanaticism.  In many instances, they appear to have fabricated their stories with much ingenuity and tact, making them tally with the statements of the accusers, adding points and items that gave an air of truthfulness, and falling in with current notions and fancies.  They were undoubtedly under training by the girls, and were provided with the materials of their testimony.  Their depositions are valuable, inasmuch as they enable us to collect about the whole of the notions then prevalent on the subject.  If, in delivering their evidences, any prompting was needed, the accusers were at their elbows, and helped them along in their stories.  If, in any particular, they were in danger of contradicting themselves or others, they were checked or diverted.  In one case, a confessing witch was damaging her own testimony, whereupon one of the afflicted cried out that she saw the shapes or apparitions of other witches interfering with her utterance.  The witness took the hint, pretended to have lost the power of expressing herself, and was removed from the stand.

In some cases, the confessing witches showed great adroitness, and knowledge of human nature.  When a leading minister was visiting them in the prison, one of them cried out as he passed her cell, calling him by name, “Oh!  I remember a text you preached on in England, twenty years since, from these words:  ‘Your sin will find you out;’ for I find it to be true in my own case.”  This skilful compliment, showing the power of his preaching making an impression which time could not efface, was no doubt flattering to the good man, and secured for her his favorable influence.

Justice requires that their own explanation of the influences which led them to confess should not be withheld.

The following declaration of six women belonging to Andover is accompanied by a paper signed by more than fifty of the most respectable inhabitants of that town, testifying to their good character, in which it is said that “by their sober, godly, and exemplary conversation, they have obtained a good report in the place, where they have been well esteemed and approved in the church of which they are members:”—­

“We whose names are underwritten, inhabitants of Andover, when as that horrible and tremendous judgment, beginning at Salem Village, in the year 1692, by some called witchcraft, first breaking forth at Mr. Parris’s house, several young persons, being seemingly afflicted, did accuse several persons for afflicting them; and many there believing it so to be, we being informed, that, if a person was sick, the afflicted person could tell what or who was the cause of that sickness:  John Ballard of Andover, his wife being sick at the same time, he, either from himself,