“Terrible! Oh, most terrible!” whispered Willis.
“Out upon you,” I exclaimed. “’Tis naught but a lot of high sounding law terms. Master Sewall has a pretty trick of rolling them off his tongue.”
I glanced at the prisoners, who had been led to chairs on the high platform near the judges’ desks. She, who was called Marie, looked straight over the heads of the crowd, right down to where I sat. Her eyes roved on past me to the shrinking form of the maiden at my right. The latter raised her head, her eyes dim with tears.
While I watched her lips moved, as if in prayer, and she stretched out her arms to the beautiful girl on the stand.
“Who is the maid at our right?” I asked of Willis.
“’Tis Lucille, the cousin of Marie,” he answered.
Just then Lucille turned her head, and her eyes met mine. Full half a minute we gazed at each other, and though I know not the import of the message that came from her eyes, it was like one that would make me do her bidding, even though death stood in the way.
The indictment having been read the witnesses against the accused were called. The mother of Elizabeth mounted the stand, and began giving her testimony in a dull, monotonous tone.
She told how the two children were of a sudden stricken into fits one day, which illness Dr. Clarke was not able to allay. Then the children cried out that some one was thrusting pins in them. Dr. Jacobs related how he had been called in, and, finding no evident cause for the ailments, had concluded, with Dr. Clarke, that the girls were possessed by witches. How the learned men arrived at this conclusion they said not.
Then came strange testimony. Dr. Jacobs told how he had cautioned Mistress Parris to hang the children’s blankets near the fireplace at night, burning whatever fell therefrom. A great toad dropped out, the woman said, and a boy caught the reptile up with the tongs, and threw it in the fire. It exploded with a noise like gun powder, and the next day Tituba was found to be burned on the left cheek, which made it plain that she had changed herself into a toad for the purpose of tormenting the children. What further proof was wanting? If there was it would seem to have been furnished by the girls themselves.