w an animal of
better taste."

"That may be," replied the maiden blushing; "but you see how it is that
I shall never be able to sell Little Witch if I desire to do so. She is
not worth her keep to any one but me."

"Little Witch! Why did you ever give her a name like that?"

"Oh, I was a mere child--and my father, who had been a sea-captain, and
all over the world, did not believe in witches. He named her "Little
Witch" because she was so black, and so bent on her own way. But I must
change her name now that people are talking so about witches. In truth
my mother never liked it."

CHAPTER VIII.

An Examination of Reputed Witches.

Warrants had been duly issued against Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and the
Indian woman Tituba, and they were now to be tried for the very serious
offence of bewitching the "afflicted children."

One way that the witches of that day were supposed to work, was to make
images out of rags, like dolls, which they named for the persons they
meant to torment. Then, by sticking pins and needles into the dolls,
tightening cords around their throats, and similar doings, the witches
caused the same amount of pain as if they had done it to the living
objects of their enmity.

In these cases, the officers who executed the warrants of arrest, stated
"that they had made diligent search for images and such like, but could
find none."

On the day appointed for the examination of these poor women, the two
leading magistrates of the neighborhood, John Hathorne and Jonathan
Corwin, rode up the principal street of the village attended by the
marshal and constables, in quite an imposing array. The crowd was so
great that they had to hold the session in the meeting-house The
magistrates belonged to the highest legislative and judicial body in the
colony. Hathorne, as the name was then spelt, was the ancestor of the
gifted author, Nathaniel Hawthorne--the alteration in the spelling of
the name probably being made to make it conform more nearly to the
pronunciation. Hathorne was a man of force and ability--though evidently
also as narrow-minded and unfair as only a bigot can be. All through the
examination that ensued he took a leading part, and with him, to be
accused was to be set down at once as guilty. Never, among either
Christian or heathen people, was there a greater travesty of justice
than these examinations and trials for witchcraft, conducted by the very
foremost men of the Massachusetts c