spering in her ear!" one of them suddenly
exclaimed. "What does he say to you?" the judge demanded of Martha
Corey, accepting at once the "spectral evidence". "We must not believe
all these distracted children say," was her sensible answer. But good
sense was not much regarded at witch trials, and she was convicted and
not long afterward executed. Her husband's evidence, which went
strongly against her, is here given as a good example of much of the
testimony by which the nineteen Salem victims of the delusion were sent
to Gallows Hill.

"One evening I was sitting by the fire when my wife asked me to go to
bed. I told her that I would go to prayer, and when I went to prayer I
could not utter my desires with any sense, nor open my mouth to speak.
After a little space I did according to my measure attend the duty. Some
time last week I fetched an ox well out of the woods about noon, and he
laying down in the yard, I went to raise him to yoke him, but he could
not rise, but dragged his hinder parts as if he had been hip shot, but
after did rise. I had a cat some time last week strongly taken on the
sudden, and did make me think she would have died presently. My wife bid
me knock her in the head, but I did not, and since she is well. My wife
hath been wont to sit up after I went to bed, and I have perceived her
to kneel down as if she were at prayer, but heard nothing."

Incredible as it seems to-day, this was accepted as "evidence" of Mrs.
Corey's bewitchment. Then, as so often happened, Giles Corey, the
accuser, was soon himself accused. He was arrested, taken from his mill,
and brought before the judges of the special court appointed by Governor
Phips to hear the witch trials in Salem. Again the girls went through
their performance, again there was an endeavour to extort a confession.
But this time Corey acted the part of a man. He had had leisure for
reflection since he had testified against his wife, and he was now as
sure that she was guiltless as that he himself was. Bitter, indeed, must
have been the realisation that he had helped convict her. But he
atoned, as has been said, to her and to his children by subjecting
himself to veritable martyrdom. Though an old man whose hair was
whitened with the snows of eighty winters, he "was laid on his back, a
board placed on his body with as great a weight upon it as he could
endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day,
and a draught of water the