corresponding to them in the New.

And so the prosecutions and convictions went on; but the further
executions waited upon the Governor's decision.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

The Rattlesnake Makes a Spring.

It was a Thursday afternoon, and the "afflicted circle" was having one
of its informal meetings at the house of Mistress Ann Putnam. At these
meetings the latest developments were talked over; and all the scandal
of the neighborhood, and even of Boston and other towns, gathered and
discussed. Thus in the examination of Captain Alden in addition to the
material charges of witchcraft against him, which I have noted, were
entirely irrelevant slanders of the grossest kind against his moral
character which the "afflicted girls" must have gathered from very low
and vulgar sources.

The only man present on this occasion was Jethro Sands; and the girls,
especially Leah Herrick, could not but wonder who now was to be "cried
out against," that Jethro was brought into their counsels.

It is a curious natural instinct which leads every faculty--even the
basest--to crave more food in proportion to the extent in which it has
been already gratified. In the first place, the "afflicted" girls no
doubt had their little spites, revenges, and jealousies to indulge, but
afterwards they seemed to "cry out" against those of whom they hardly
knew anything, either to oblige another of the party, or to punish for
an expressed disbelief in their sincerity, or even out of the mere
wantonness of power to do evil.

Mistress Ann Putnam opened the serious business of the afternoon, after
an hour or so had been spent in gossip and tale-bearing, by an account
of some recent troubles of hers.

"A few nights ago," said she, "I awakened in the middle of the night
with choking and strangling. I knew at once that a new 'evil hand' was
upon me; for the torment was different from any I had ever experienced.
I thought the hand that grasped me around the throat would have killed
me--and there was a heavy weight upon my breast, so that I could hardly
breathe. I clutched at the thing that pressed upon my breast, and it
felt hard and bony like a horse's hoof--and it was a horse. By the faint
moonlight I saw it was the wild black 'familiar' that belongs to the
snake-marked witch, Dulcibel Burton. But the hand that grasped my throat
was the strong hand of a man. I caught a sight of his face. I knew it
well. But I pity him so much that I hesitate to reveal