When they reached the meeting-house, the doors were only just being unlocked, but already the space at the foot of the steps was packed and breathless. Their little party would never have been able to come near the stairs leading up to the entrance had not Margeret, who was esteemed as a great person in the village, been granted room by those who stood in the way. By squeezing and slipping in and out, the three managed finally to make their way close up to the foot of the stairs. Above them stood the magistrates, the chief men of the church and a stranger, all waiting for the doors to open. The newcomer was a tall man with greyish hair, stooped shoulders and a deeply lined face; he wore a rusty black coat whose pockets bulged with papers. This, as every one knew, was the great Master Cotton Mather, the famous minister, who knew more of witches and their evil ways than did any other living man. It was a great honour that he had come to Hopewell to save them in their danger and to help in the trial and conviction of their witch.
The chief magistrate had, with some difficulty, drawn the big iron key from his coat-tail pocket and was inserting it in the lock. Mother Garford, weeping and trembling was being half led, half dragged up the stairs by a self-important bailiff. Every head turned in startled surprise when, of a sudden, a voice cried to the magistrate to stop.
Margeret Bardwell had pushed her way through the crowd and was standing on the stairs below them. She was speaking in a clear, steady voice that carried to the ears of all the waiting people.
“Hold,” she cried. “Before we desecrate our meeting house with the trial of an innocent old woman who is no more of a witch than you or I, you must hear what we three Bardwells have to say. I would that there were four of us, and that my husband, who has gone to sea, were here to stand by me, but as it is you must pause in your folly and listen to a woman.”
“What—what—what?” exclaimed the magistrate. “Who is it dares to speak thus? Oh—Mistress Bardwell, perhaps I heard amiss. It cannot be that you defend this woman!”
Wonder and consternation became visible on every upturned face, only Master Cotton Mather remained unmoved.
“It is well known,” he pronounced in his slow, precise tones, “that in many cases witches and sorcerers are able to bewitch others into speaking in their favour against all sense and reason. So it must be with this poor lady, but yet we will hear her.”
“I wish to say,” continued Margeret, “that there is no real evidence against Mother Garford, none but that which your own foolish fears have conjured up.”
“You are wrong there, Mistress,” interrupted one of the Tything Men quickly, “there have been many suspicious signs and portents such as no God-fearing person can deny. Mother Garford has looked with an evil eye upon many a man or woman and many a house in this town, after which misfortune has followed quickly. Did not Dame Allen’s baby cry itself into convulsions only an hour after the witch’s shadow had passed the door, and did not Goodman Green’s cow roll up its eyes and die the very morning that Mother Garford came there to buy a halfpenny’s worth of milk?”
“Ay,” broke in the magistrate, “and we have further witness, also, of her evil ways; there is not one man or woman in this town but can tell some strange tale of her. However, the proof conclusive was what happened yesterday, namely, that when she was first brought into the jail, Heaven sought to destroy so wicked a creature by casting down one of the great beams in the corridor, so that she came near to being crushed by it.”