In front of the pulpit, the seven judges seated in a row faced the people. Clothed in all the dignity of their office of crimson velvet gowns and curled white horse-hair wigs, they were an imposing array. One judge, however, wore a black skull-cap, from beneath which his brown locks, streaked with gray, fell to his shoulders, around a countenance at once benevolent and firm, but which now wore an expression revealing much anguish of mind. This was the great Judge Samuel Sewall, who, in later years, was crushed by sorrow and mortification that at these trials he had been made guilty of shedding innocent blood, so that he rose in his pew in the Old South Church in Boston Town, acknowledging and bewailing his great offence, and asking the prayers of the congregation “that God would not visit the sin of him or of any other upon himself, or any of his, nor upon the land.”
In the centre of the group sat Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton, chosen to be chief justice, in that he was a renowned scholar, rather than a great soldier. Hard and narrow as he was said to be, he yet possessed that stubbornness in carrying out his convictions of what was right, which exercised in a better cause might have won him reputation for wisdom rather than obstinacy.
To the end of his days he insisted that the witch-trials had been meet and proper, and that the only mistakes made had been in checking the prosecutions. It was currently reported that when the panic subsided, and the reprieve for several convicted prisoners came from Governor Phipps to Salem, he left the bench in anger and went no more into that court.
“For,” said he, “we were in a fair way to clear the land of witches. Who it is that obstructs the cause of justice, I know not. The Lord be merciful unto the country!”
On the left of the prisoner was the jury.
After Deliverance had been duly sworn to tell the truth, she sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap. Now and then she raised her eyes and glanced over the faces upturned to hers. She observed her father not far distant from her. But he held one hand over his eyes and she could not meet his gaze. Beside him sat Goodwife Higgins, weeping.
There was one other who should have been present, her brother Ronald, but he was nowhere to be seen.
The authorities had not deemed it wise to send for him, as it was known he had to a certain extent fallen in with dissenters and free-thinkers in Boston Town, and it was feared that, in the hot blooded impetuosity of youth, he might by some disturbance hinder the trial.
The first witness called to the stand was Goodwife Higgins.
Deliverance, too dazed with trouble to feel any active grief, watched her with dull eyes.