This pudding-faced, sanctimonious, yet merciless judge had listened to the heart-broken appeals of the victims, raising their manacled hands to heaven for that justice denied them upon earth. "I have got nobody to look to but God." "There is another judgment, dear child." "The Lord will not suffer it." Others as passionately reproached their accusers, but all were confounded, because all were believers in the fact of witchcraft.[147] Whether Witch Hill be the first or last place visited, it is there Salem witchcraft culminates. There is seen, in approaching by the railway from Boston, a bleak and rocky eminence bestrown with a little soil. Houses of the poorer sort straggle up its eastern acclivity, while the south and west faces remain as formed by nature, abrupt and precipitous. The hill is one of a range stretching away northward in a broken line toward the Merrimac. On the summit is a tolerably level area of several acres. Not a tree was growing on it when I was there. The bleak winds sweep over it without hinderance. On the 19th of July, 1692, an unusual stir might have been observed in Salem. We may suppose the town excited beyond any thing that had been known in its history. The condemned witches, Sarah Good, Sarah Wildes, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, and Rebecca Nurse, are to be hanged on Gallows Hill. The narrow lane in which the common jail is situated is thronged with knots of men and women, wearing gloomy, awe-struck faces, conversing in under-tones. Before the jail door are musketeers of the train-band, armed and watchful. The crowd gives way on the approach of a cart that stops in front of the prison door, which is now wide opened. On one side stands the jailer, with ponderous keys hanging at his girdle; on the other is the sheriff, grasping his staff of office. The guard clears a passage, and then the sheriff's voice is heard calling upon the condemned to come forth. There are five of them, all women. They look pale, haggard, despairing. At sight of them a murmur ripples through the crowd, succeeded by solemn stillness. As they mount the cart with weak and tottering steps--for some are old and feeble and gray-haired--audible sobs are heard among the by-standers. Men's lips are compressed and teeth clenched as they look on with white faces. All is ready. The guard surrounds the cart, as if a rescue were feared. It takes a score of strong men, armed to the teeth, to conduct five helpless women to death! I suppose there were outcries, hootings, and imprecations, as is the rabble's wont. If so, I believe they were borne with the resignation and heroism that make woman the superior of man in supreme moments. At last the cavalcade is grouped around the place of execution. The gallows and the fatal ladder are there, grotesque yet horrible. To each of those five women they meant martyrdom, and nothing less.