are gathering berries.

DORCAS
(entering excitedly).
You'll gather no more berries when you've heard the news. Sure, there
be stirring things afoot this day in Salem. What dost think? Barbara
Williams hath been bewitched!

RENOUNCE.
Dorcas!

DORCAS
(importantly).
Aye, since yesternight she hath clean disappeared. The evening meal was
set: she did not come. They have searched the woods, and the marshland,
and the roadways. 'Tis plain she hath been spirited away, and Goodwife
Abigail Williams is nigh out of her mind. But now that they've found
the witch----

TABITHA
(eagerly).
Found her----

DORCAS
(triumphantly).
Aye, found her! And you'll never guess who 'tis! Hark! They're coming!
She was hobbling this way as I passed, little dreaming that her evil
deeds would find her out so soon! The half o' Salem must be at her
heels. Look! Look!

GOODY GURTON'S VOICE
(from left, a cry of terror).
I am no witch. Good sirs, I am no witch. Mercy! Mercy!

RENOUNCE
(startled).
'Tis Goody Gurton's voice! Why, she is a poor old woman who hath never
done harm to any.

CRIES
(off stage, left).
A witch! A witch! A-aaaaah! A witch!

[The crowd surges in from left, dragging in the midst of it poor old
Goody Gurton. They separate and form a wide semicircle of which
Holdfast Bradford and trembling Goody Gurton form the center. In the
crowd are Goodwife Williams, Goodwife Hubbard, Mercy Hubbard, Goodwife
Brown, Repentance Folger, Vigilant Winthrop, John Giles, Roger
Blackthorne, and other people of Salem.

BRADFORD.
Silence, and look! Look, people of Salem! You know this spot right
well. 'Tis here that witches are reported to hold their wicked revels.
What better place have we in which to try a witch? Custom hath had it
aforetime that we have tried them in the courthouse. Now let us try
them on their own ground. 'Twill show that we fear neither them nor
their master. Neither their black books, nor their caldron's brew.
Stand forth, Goody Gurton, the accused. What have you to say? There is
the woman whose child you have bewitched and stolen.

GOODY GURTON
(in a trembling, aged voice).
I stole no child. I have bewitched no one. I am a poor old woman, as
you all know. I get my living by my needle, and my brews of herbs.

BRADFORD.
Stand forth, Abigail. Is it not true that half the town hath searched
for Barbara Williams since yesterday at sundown, and not a trace of her
hath been found?

GOODWIFE WILLIAMS
(wildly).