“What lying spirit was it, then?—­It was a voice that I
     thought I heard.

     “What did it propound to you?—­That I should go no more to
     meeting; but I said I would, and did go the next
     sabbath-day.

     “Were you never tempted further?—­No.

     “Why did you yield thus far to the Devil as never to go to
     meeting since?—­Alas!  I have been sick, and not able to go.

     “Her husband and others said that she had not been at
     meeting three years and two months.”

The foregoing illustrates the unfairness practised by the examining magistrate.  He took for granted, as we shall find to have been the case in all instances, the guilt of the prisoner, and endeavored to entangle her by leading questions, thus involving her in contradiction.  By the force of his own assumptions, he had compelled Sarah Good to admit the reality of the sufferings of the girls, and that they must be caused by some one.  The amount of what she had said was, that, if caused by one or the other of them, “then it must be Osburn,” for she was sure of her own innocence.  This expression, to which she was driven in self-exculpation, was perverted by the reporter, Ezekiel Cheever, and by the magistrate, into an indirect confession and a direct accusation of Osburn.  In the absence of Good, the magistrate told Osburn that Good had confessed and accused her.  This was a misrepresentation of one, and a false and fraudulent trick upon the other.  Considering the feeble condition of Sarah Osburn generally, the snares by which she was beset, the distressing and bewildering circumstances in which she was placed, and the infirm state of her reason, as evidenced in her statement of what she saw, or dreamed that she saw and heard,—­not having a clear idea which,—­her answers, as reported by the prosecutors, show that her broken and disordered mind was essentially truthful and innocent.

Sarah Osburn was removed from the meeting-house, and Tituba brought in and examined, as follows:—­

     “Tituba, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?—­None.

     “Why do you hurt these children?—­I do not hurt them.

     “Who is it then?—­The Devil, for aught I know.

     “Did you never see the Devil?—­The Devil came to me, and bid
     me serve him.

     “Who have you seen?—­Four women sometimes hurt the children.

     “Who were they?—­Goody Osburn and Sarah Good, and I do not
     know who the others were.  Sarah Good and Osburn would have
     me hurt the children, but I would not.

     “(She further saith there was a tall man of Boston that she
     did see.)

     “When did you see them?—­Last night, at Boston.

     “What did they say to you?—­They said, ‘Hurt the children.’

“And did you hurt them?—­No:  there is four women and one man, they hurt the children, and then they lay all upon me; and they tell me, if I will not hurt the children, they will hurt me.

     “But did you not hurt them?—­Yes; but I will hurt them no
     more.