When the constable and his followers came into the town of Salem, with Barbara Stafford in their midst, a wild commotion seized upon the inhabitants. Every door and window was crowded with human heads. The public streets were swarming like a bee-hive, and a look of solemn consternation greeted her at every point. Pale and still Barbara passed before them. The subdued feeling, the majesty and grandeur of her carriage, impressed many with awe, and a few with gleams of compassion; but the ban of witchcraft was upon her, and no one ventured to step forth for her defence or comfort. She was not insulted: among the whole crowd there was no man or child cruel enough to assail her. Little boys who had gathered up stones and handfuls of turf to hurl at the witch, felt the missiles dropping from their grasp when those great, mournful eyes turned upon them. Some little girls, in the tenderness of their youth, began to cry when they saw how her hands were bound; but one or two old women called out, and with jeers bade her prove her descent from the devil by breaking her own bonds, exactly as like revilers mocked our Saviour more than sixteen hundred years before. But some supernatural power seemed to bind the voices of these women, and the words they would have uttered died out in low groans: the gentle power of that woman's presence silenced even the spite of unredeemed old age. The constable and his men bent their way to the house of Samuel Parris, where the accused was to be confronted with her victim. The inhabitants of the town followed the cortege, and gathered in groups upon the stretch of sward that lay between the minister's dwelling and the meeting-house; while the functionaries of the church and officials of the government entered the house. Elizabeth Parris still kept her room, but in her delirium she had insisted on wearing her usual apparel, and when her father came up, with distress in his face, to prepare her for the approach of her strange visitors, the young girl was resolute to descend to the rooms below where she would entertain her father's guests with due state. Possessed of the idea that there was some great entertainment at which she was to preside, the beautiful lunatic--for such fever and intense excitement had made her for the time--began to rummage in her chest of drawers for the pretty ornaments with which she had adorned herself while the guest of Lady Phipps. The old minister dared not resist her; with him these vagaries were solemn evidences of witchcraft with which it was sacrilege to interfere.