Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/166

 *educated woman; she held the common opinion of her times—she believed in witchcraft, and was willing to allow that the children were bewitched; but she knew her own innocence, and she only asserted that and said, "Would you have me belie myself?"

At length—being old, sick, and feeble, worn out both in mind and body, and wearied with all she had thus undergone in this long examination—the poor woman's head drooped in very weakness; and at once, to the consternation of the court and spectators, the necks of all the children were bent in the same way.

Elizabeth Hubbard's neck appeared fixed, and could not be moved, and Abigail Williams cried out:

"Set up Goody Nurse's head, or the maid's neck will be broke;" whereupon some one holding up the prisoner's head, the neck of the other was righted at once.

Then the Rev. Mr. Parris read aloud a declaration of what Thomas Putnam's wife had said while in her fits—that the apparition of Goody Nurse had come to her at several times, and had horribly tortured her; and then Hathorne asked her: