Abigail Williams moved about coldly and in breathless silence. The curse of witchcraft was upon the house, hatred and death clung around it like cerecloths to a coffin. What if she, too, were possessed--the story of old Tituba, a device of the Evil One, and the young chief so wildly beautiful, who claimed relationship with her, the arch fiend himself? The very foundations of her reason seemed shaken by these doubts, and as the moans and cries of Elizabeth reached her ear from time to time, she would pause in her work and stand motionless like a block of marble, till some new sound startled her into life again. All night Samuel Parris sat by the bedside of his child, pallid and thoughtful. Over and again he questioned her in the midst of her wild speeches, as a judge sifts the words of a doubtful witness. Sometimes he fell into audible prayer, and again sat in dull silence pondering gloomily. When the morning came he went forth, and, mounting his horse, rode to the nearest magistrate, who was a deacon in his own church, and a man of iron domination. Samuel Parris knew well that after his appeal to this man, there could be little free will left to him. No wonder then that he walked heavily, and paused long upon the door-step before entering. He shrunk from hunting down the life of a helpless woman, and shuddered at the thought of making a charge from which there was no chance of retreat. The minister went in at last, and the door closed heavily after him. The sound of a muffled drum could not have followed his footsteps more solemnly. After an hour the old man came forth again, and moved with a slow tread down the village street toward his own dwelling. As he passed the doors of his parishioners, men and women came out and questioned him in low tones, and with looks of awe, regarding the condition of his child. He answered them all patiently, but with a sad weariness of manner that turned curiosity into compassion. On the threshold of his home Samuel Parris met three men, members of his own congregation, who greeted him in silence, as neighbors salute the chief mourners at a funeral. Then the four passed in, and mounted to the chamber where Elizabeth lay, with her wild eyes lifted to the ceiling, and her hands waving about in the air. These four good men--for after the manner of the times they were good--sat down in silence, and each gathered from the lips of the delirious girl the evidence which was to imperil a human life. When they had listened an hour keenly and conscientiously, each according to his light, they arose and went forth, shaking Samuel Parris by the hand with touching solemnity. The old minister saw his friends file away from the house, and bend their course toward that of the magistrate, and then he felt with a pang of unutterable sorrow that the fate of Barbara Stafford had passed out of his hands.