it had
bitten them often with its little teeth, for refusing to sign a compact
with the Evil One. It can hardly increase our feelings of disgust and
abhorrence when we learn that this insane community actually tried and
executed a dog for the same offence!

One man, named Cory, stoutly refused to plead to the preposterous
indictment against him. As was the practice in such eases, he was
pressed to death. It is told of the Sheriff of New England, who
superintended the execution, that when this unhappy man thrust out his
tongue in his mortal agony, he seized hold of a cane, and crammed it
back again into the mouth. If ever there were a fiend in human form, it
was this Sheriff; a man, who, if the truth were known, perhaps plumed
himself upon his piety--thought he was doing God good service, and

"Hoped to merit heaven by making earth a hell!"

Arguing still in the firm belief of witchcraft, the bereaved people
began to inquire, when they saw their dearest friends snatched away
from them by these wide-spreading accusations, whether the whole
proceedings were not carried on by the agency of the devil. Might not
the great enemy have put false testimony into the mouths of the
witnesses, or might not the witnesses be witches themselves? Every man
who was in danger of losing his wife, his child, or his sister,
embraced this doctrine with avidity. The revulsion was as sudden as the
first frenzy. All at once, the colonists were convinced of their error.
The judges put a stop to the prosecutions, even of those who had
confessed their guilt. The latter were no sooner at liberty than they
retracted all they had said, and the greater number hardly remembered
the avowals which agony had extorted from them. Eight persons, who had
been tried and condemned, were set free; and gradually girls ceased to
have fits and to talk of the persecutions of the devil. The judge who
had condemned the first criminal executed on this charge, was so
smitten with sorrow and humiliation at his folly, that he set apart the
anniversary of that day as one of solemn penitence and fasting. He
still clung to the belief in witchcraft; no new light had broken in
upon him on that subject, but, happily for the community, the delusion
had taken a merciful turn. The whole colony shared the feeling; the
jurors on the different trials openly expressed their penitence in the
churches; and those who had suffered were regarded as the victims, and
not the accomplices