Enter COREY with his riding-whip.  As he speaks he takes off his hat and gloves and throws them down violently.

COREY. 
I say if Satan ever entered man
He’s in John Proctor!

MARTHA. 
             Giles, what is the matter? 
You frighten me.

COREY. 
                 I say if any man
Can have a Devil in him, then that man
Is Proctor,—­is John Proctor, and no other!

MARTHA. 
Why, what has he been doing?

COREY. 
                        Everything! 
What do you think I heard there in the village?

MARTHA. 
I’m sure I cannot guess.  What did you hear?

COREY. 
He says I burned his house!

MARTHA. 
                      Does he say that?

COREY. 
He says I burned his house.  I was in bed
And fast asleep that night; and I can prove it.

MARTHA. 
If he says that, I think the Father of Lies
Is surely in the man.

COREY. 
                    He does say that
And that I did it to wreak vengeance on him
For taking sides against me in the quarrel
I had with that John Gloyd about his wages. 
And God knows that I never bore him malice
For that, as I have told him twenty times

MARTHA. 
It is John Gloyd has stirred him up to this. 
I do not like that Gloyd.  I think him crafty,
Not to be trusted, sullen and untruthful. 
Come, have your supper.  You are tired and hungry.

COREY. 
I’m angry, and not hungry.

MARTHA. 
                     Do eat something. 
You’ll be the better for it.

COREY (sitting down). 
                       I’m not hungry.

MARTHA. 
Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

COREY. 
It has gone down upon it, and will rise
To-morrow, and go down again upon it. 
They have trumped up against me the old story
Of causing Goodell’s death by trampling on him.

MARTHA. 
Oh, that is false.  I know it to be false.

COREY. 
He has been dead these fourteen years or more. 
Why can’t they let him rest?  Why must they drag him
Out of his grave to give me a bad name? 
I did not kill him.  In his bed he died,
As most men die, because his hour had come. 
I have wronged no man.  Why should Proctor say
Such things bout me?  I will not forgive him
Till he confesses he has slandered me. 
Then, I’ve more trouble.  All my cattle gone.

MARTHA. 
They will come back again.

COREY. 
                    Not in this world. 
Did I not tell you they were overlooked? 
They ran down through the woods, into the meadows,
And tried to swim the river, and were drowned. 
It is a heavy loss.

MARTHA. 
                   I’m sorry for it.