"Torment them!—you see I am not touching them. I do not even know them; I never saw them before in my life," growled the indignant old seaman.

"See! there is the little yellow bird kissing his lips!" cried Abigail Williams. "Now it is whispering into his ear. It is bringing him a message from the other witch Dulcibel Burton. See! see! there it goes back again to her—through the window!"

So well was this done, that probably half of the people present would have been willing to swear the next day, that they actually saw the yellow bird as she described it.

"Ask him if he did not give her the yellow bird," said Leah Herrick. "But probably he will lie about it."

"Did you not give the witch, Dulcibel Burton, a yellow bird, which is one of her familiars?" said Squire Hathorne sternly.

"I gave her a canary bird that I brought from the West Indies, if that is what you mean," replied the Captain. "But what harm was there in that?"

"I knew it! The yellow bird told me so, when it came to peck out my eyes," cried Mercy Lewis. "Oh! there it is again!" and she struck wildly into the air before her face. "Drive it away! Do drive it away, some one!"

Here a young man pulled out his rapier, and began thrusting at the invisible bird in a furious manner.

"Now it comes to me!" cried Sarah Churchill. And then the other girls also cried out, and began striking into the air before their faces, till there was anew a perfect babel of cries, shrieks and sympathizing voices.

Master Raymond, amid all his indignation at such barefaced and wicked and yet successful imposture, could hardly avoid smiling at the expression of the old seaman's face as he stood on the chair, and fronted all this tempest of absurd and villainous accusation. At first there had been a deep crimson glow of the hottest wrath upon the old man's cheeks and brow; but now he seemed to have been shocked into a kind of stupor, so unexpected and weighty were the charges against him, and made with such vindictive fierceness; and yet so utterly absurd, while at the same time, so impossible of being refuted.