On the 22d of March she was brought into the thronged meeting-house to be accused before the magistrates, and to answer as she best could. We must pass over those painful pages, where nonsense, spasms of hysteria, new and strange to their worships, cunning, cruelty, blasphemy, indecency, turned the house of prayer into a hell for the time. The aged woman could explain nothing. She simply asserted her innocence, and supposed that some evil spirit was at work. One thing more she could do--she could endure with calmness malice and injustice which are too much for our composure at a distance of nearly two centuries. She felt the _animus_ of her enemies, and she pointed out how they perverted whatever she said; but no impatient word escaped her. She was evidently as perplexed as anybody present. When weary and disheartened, and worn out with the noise and the numbers and the hysterics of the "afflicted," her head drooped on one shoulder. Immediately all the "afflicted" had twisted necks, and rude hands seized her head to set it upright, "lest other necks should be broken by her ill offices." Everything went against her, and the result was what had been hoped by the agitators. The venerable matron was carried to jail and put in irons. DEPOSITIONS OF PARRIS AND HIS TOOLS. Now Mr. Parris' time had arrived, and he broadly accused her of murder, employing for the purpose a fitting instrument--Mrs. Ann Putnam, the mother of one of the afflicted children, and herself of highly nervous temperament, undisciplined mind, and absolute devotedness to her pastor. Her deposition, preceded by a short one of Mr. Parris, will show the quality of the evidence on which judicial murder was inflicted: "Mr. Parris gave in a deposition against her; from which it appears, that, a certain person being sick, Mercy Lewis was sent for. She was struck dumb on entering the chamber. She was asked to hold up her hand if she saw any of the witches afflicting the patient. Presently she held up her hand, then fell into a trance; and after a while, coming to herself, said that she saw the spectre of Goody Nurse and Goody Carrier having hold of the head of the sick man. Mr. Parris swore to this statement with the utmost confidence in Mercy's declarations." (Vol. ii. p. 275.)