“I wish to say,” continued Margeret, “that there is no real evidence against Mother Garford, none but that which your own foolish fears have conjured up.” “You are wrong there, Mistress,” interrupted one of the Tything Men quickly, “there have been many suspicious signs and portents such as no God-fearing person can deny. Mother Garford has looked with an evil eye upon many a man or woman and many a house in this town, after which misfortune has followed quickly. Did not Dame Allen’s baby cry itself into convulsions only an hour after the witch’s shadow had passed the door, and did not Goodman Green’s cow roll up its eyes and die the very morning that Mother Garford came there to buy a halfpenny’s worth of milk?” “Ay,” broke in the magistrate, “and we have further witness, also, of her evil ways; there is not one man or woman in this town but can tell some strange tale of her. However, the proof conclusive was what happened yesterday, namely, that when she was first brought into the jail, Heaven sought to destroy so wicked a creature by casting down one of the great beams in the corridor, so that she came near to being crushed by it.” “Yes,” returned Margeret undaunted, “of that I have heard, and it is of that we have come hither to speak. You may call us bewitched if you will, but I and these two witnesses of mine must raise our voices for truth and justice’s sake. Come, Amos, tell these good gentlemen what befell when you climbed upon the beam. And later my daughter will have something further to testify.” Amos, quite enjoying his sudden importance, stepped up beside Margeret and told with great cheeriness how he and Dicky Porter, in their eagerness to see the witch, had damaged the beam in the corridor so that later it fell. “And any one who looks at the broken wood,” he concluded, “can see that it was rotten and ready to give way.” “The boy’s words prove nothing,” thundered forth Master Mather; “he and his young comrades were chosen as instruments of Providence, that is all.” It was an old explanation among the Puritans, but for once it seemed to give little satisfaction to those who listened. Amos Bardwell and Dicky Porter, small, impish and ever in mischief, seemed not the most likely tools to be chosen by Heaven. People began to shake their heads in doubt. Terror and credulity could drive them far, but there were limits, even so. “We will listen to what the maid has to say,” announced the chief magistrate, declining to commit himself over Amos’ story.