How may this story best be told? Clearly, so far as may be, in the very words of the actors in those tragic scenes, in the words of the minister and magistrate, the justice and the juryman, the accuser and the accused, and the searcher. Into this court of inquiry come all these personalities to witness the sorrowful march of the victims to the scaffold or to exile, or to acquittal and deliverance with the after life of suspicion and social ostracism. The spectres of terror did not sit alone at the firesides of the poor and lowly: they stalked in high places, and were known of men and women of the first rank in education and the social virtues, and of greatest influence in church and state. Of this fact there is complete demonstration in a glance at the dignitaries who presided at one of the earliest witchcraft trials--men of notable ancestry, of learning, of achievements, leaders in colonial affairs, whose memories are honored to this day. These were the magistrates at a session entitled "A particular courte in Hartford upon the tryall of John Carrington and his wife 20th Feb., 1662" (See _Rec. P.C._, 2: 17): Edw. Hopkins Esqr., Gournor John Haynes Esqr. Deputy, Mr. Wells, Mr. Woolcott, Mr. Webster, Mr. Cullick, Mr. Clarke. This court had jurisdiction over misdemeanors, and was "aided by a jury," as a close student of colonial history, the late Sherman W. Adams, quaintly says in one of his historical papers. These were the jurymen: Mr. Phelps John White John More Mr. Tailecoat Will Leawis Edw. Griswold Mr. Hollister Sam. Smith Steph. Harte Daniel Milton John Pratt Theo. Judd Before this tribunal--representative of the others doing like service later--made up of the foremost citizens, and of men in the ordinary walks of life, endowed with hard common sense and presumably inspired with a spirit of justice and fair play, came John Carrington and his wife Joan of Wethersfield, against whom the jury brought in a verdict of guilty. It must be clearly borne in mind that all these men, in this as in all the other witchcraft trials in Connecticut, illustrious or commonplace--as are many of their descendants whose names are written on the rolls of the patriotic societies in these days of ancestral discovery and exploitation--were absolute believers in the powers of Satan and his machinations through witchcraft and the evidence then adduced to prove them, and trained to such credulity by their education and experience, by their theological doctrines, and by the law of the land in Old England, but still clothed upon with that righteousness which as it proved in the end made them skeptical as to certain alleged evidences of guilt, and swift to respond to the calls of reason and of mercy when the appeals were made to their calm judgment and second thought as to the sins of their fellowmen.