MATHER. 
                  Is she always thus?

WALCOT. 
Nay, she is sometimes tortured by convulsions.

MATHER. 
Poor child!  How thin she is!  How wan and wasted!

HATHORNE. 
Observe her.  She is troubled in her sleep.

MATHER. 
Some fearful vision haunts her.

HATHORNE. 
                           You now see
With your own eyes, and touch with your own hands,
The mysteries of this Witchcraft.

MATHER. 
                       One would need
The hands of Briareus and the eyes of Argus
To see and touch them all.

HATHORNE. 
                You now have entered
The realm of ghosts and phantoms,—­the vast realm
Of the unknown and the invisible,
Through whose wide-open gates there blows a wind
From the dark valley of the shadow of Death,
That freezes us with horror.

MARY (starting). 
                      Take her hence! 
Take her away from me.  I see her there! 
She’s coming to torment me!

WALCOT (taking her hand. 
                         O my sister! 
What frightens you?  She neither hears nor sees me. 
She’s in a trance.

MARY. 
              Do you not see her there?

TITUBA. 
My child, who is it?

MARY. 
                    Ah, I do not know,
I cannot see her face.

TITUBA. 
                      How is she clad?

MARY. 
She wears a crimson bodice.  In her hand
She holds an image, and is pinching it
Between her fingers.  Ah, she tortures me! 
I see her face now.  It is Goodwife Bishop! 
Why does she torture me?  I never harmed her! 
And now she strikes me with an iron rod! 
Oh, I am beaten!

MATHER. 
                 This is wonderful!. 
I can see nothing!  Is this apparition
Visibly there, and yet we cannot see it?

HATHORNE. 
It is.  The spectre is invisible
Unto our grosser senses, but she sees it.

MARY. 
Look! look! there is another clad in gray! 
She holds a spindle in her hand, and threatens
To stab me with it!  It is Goodwife Corey! 
Keep her away!  Now she is coming at me! 
Oh, mercy! mercy!

WALCOT (thrusting with his sword. 
                There is nothing there!

MATHER to HATHORNE. 
Do you see anything?

HATHORNE. 
                 The laws that govern
The spiritual world prevent our seeing
Things palpable and visible to her. 
These spectres are to us as if they were not. 
Mark her; she wakes.

TITUBA touches her, and she awakes.

MARY. 
            Who are these gentlemen?

WALCOT. 
They are our friends.  Dear Mary, are you better?

MARY. 
Weak, very weak.

Taking a spindle from her lap, and holding it up.

How came this spindle here?