"Tormenting these poor, suffering children and women!"
"You see I am not tormenting them. Bid these men unloose my hands, they are hurting me."
"They say your spectre and your familiar are tormenting them."
"They are bearing false witness against me."
"Who does hurt them then?"
"Their master, the devil, I suppose and his imps."
"Why should he hurt them?"
"Because they are liars, and bear false witness; being hungry for innocent blood."
The spirit of the free-thinking, free-spoken old sea-captain—nurtured by the free winds and the free waves for forty years—was fully alive now in his daughter. A righteous, holy indignation at the abominable farce that was going on with all its gross lying and injustice had taken possession of her, and she cared no longer for the opinions of any one around her, and thought not even of her lover looking on, but only of truth and justice. "Yes, they are possessed with devils—being children of their father, the devil!" she continued scornfully. "And they shall have their reward. As for you, Ann Putnam, in seven years from this day I summon you to meet those you have slain with your wicked, lying tongue, at the bar of Almighty God! It shall be a long dying for you!" Then, seeing Thomas Putnam by his wife's side, "And you, Thomas Putnam, you puppet in a bad woman's hands, chief aider and abettor of her wicked ways, you shall die two weeks before her, to make ready for her coming! And you," turning to the constables on each side of her, "for your cruel treatment of innocent women, shall die by this time next year!"
The constables loosened their grasp of her hands and shrank back in dismay. The "afflicted" suddenly hushed their cries and regained their composure, as they saw the accused maiden's eyes, lit up with the wildness of inspiration, glancing around their circle with lightning flashes that might strike at any moment.