Incredible as it seems to-day, this was accepted as "evidence" of Mrs. Corey's bewitchment. Then, as so often happened, Giles Corey, the accuser, was soon himself accused. He was arrested, taken from his mill, and brought before the judges of the special court appointed by Governor Phips to hear the witch trials in Salem. Again the girls went through their performance, again there was an endeavour to extort a confession. But this time Corey acted the part of a man. He had had leisure for reflection since he had testified against his wife, and he was now as sure that she was guiltless as that he himself was. Bitter, indeed, must have been the realisation that he had helped convict her. But he atoned, as has been said, to her and to his children by subjecting himself to veritable martyrdom. Though an old man whose hair was whitened with the snows of eighty winters, he "was laid on his back, a board placed on his body with as great a weight upon it as he could endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day, and a draught of water the alternate day until death put an end to his sufferings." Rightly must this mode of torture have been named _peine forte et dure_. On Gallows Hill three days later occurred the execution of eight persons, the last so to suffer in the Colony. Nineteen people in all were hanged, and one was pressed to death in Salem, but _there is absolutely no foundation for the statement that some were burned_. The revulsion that followed the cessation of the delusion was as marked as was the precipitation that characterised the proceedings. Many of the clergy concerned in the trials offered abject apologies, and Judge Sewall, noblest of all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities implicated in the madness, stood up on Fast Day before a great congregation in the South Church, Boston, acknowledged his grievous error in accepting "spectral evidence," and to the end of his life did penance yearly in the same meeting-house for his part in the transactions. Not inappropriately the gloomy old house in which the fanatical Corwin had his home is to-day given over to a dealer in antique furniture. Visitors are freely admitted upon application, and very many in the course of the year go inside to feast their eyes on the ancient wainscoting and timbers. The front door and the overhanging roof are just as in the time of the witches, and from a recessed area at the back, narrow casements and excrescent stairways are still to be seen. The original house had, however, peaked gables, with pineapples carved in wood surmounting its latticed windows and colossal chimneys that placed it unmistakably in the age of ruffs, Spanish cloaks, and long rapiers. LADY WENTWORTH OF THE HALL