bout two o'clock of
the day. I, Edward Putnam, saw the marks, both of bite and chains."

It was a great hardship in all these trials, that the prisoners were not
allowed any counsel; while on the other hand, the members of the Court
seemed to take it for granted from the first, that they were guilty. The
only favor allowed them was the right of objecting to a certain extent
to those jurors whose fairness they mistrusted.

One of the accused, a reputable and aged farmer named Giles Corey,
refused to plead. His wife, Martha Corey, was among the convicted. At
her examination, some time previous, he had allowed himself to testify
in certain respects against her; involved as he was for a time in the
prevailing delusion. But he was a man of strong mind and character; and
though not entirely able to throw off the chains which superstition had
woven around him, he repented very sorely the part he had taken against
his wife. This was enough to procure his own accusation. The "afflicted
girls" brought their usual complaints that his spectre tormented them.
They fell down and shrieked so wildly at his examination, that Squire
Hathorne asked him with great indignation, "Is it not enough that you
should afflict these girls at other times without doing it now in our
presence?"

The honest and sturdy man was visibly affected. He knew he was not
consciously doing anything; but what could it all mean? If he turned his
head, the girls said he was hurting them and turned their heads the same
way. The Court ordered his hands tied--and then the girls said they were
easier. But he drew in his cheeks, after a habit he had, and the cheeks
of the girls were sucked in also, giving them great pain. The old man
was fairly dumfounded. When however one of the girls testified that
Goodman Corey had told her that he saw the devil in the shape of a black
hog in the cow-house, and was very much frightened by it, the spirited
old man said that he never was frightened by man or devil in his life.

But he had a fair property, and two sons-in-law to whom he wished to
leave it. He knew well that if he were tried he would be convicted, and
that would carry with it the confiscation of his property. So, as other
noble-hearted men had done in that and the previous age, he refused when
brought before the Special Court, to plead either "guilty" or "not
guilty." In these later times the presiding Judge would simply order a
plea of "not guilty" to be entered, and