Tituba, the name of the woman, who was a Spanish Indian, as some accounts tell us, owned that her mistress had taught her in her own country how to find out a witch; but she denied her being one herself. Several private fasts were kept at the minister’s house, and several more by the whole village, and by neighboring parishes, and a public fast through the colony to seek to God to rebuke Satan, &c. Soon after the number of the complainants increased, and among them girls, two or three women, and some old enough to be admitted witnesses. These had their fits too, and cried out, not only upon Tituba, but upon an old melancholy distracted woman, Sarah Osburn, and a bed-rid old woman, Sarah Good. Tituba, urged to it by her master as she afterwards declared,[46] confessed herself a witch, and that the two old women were confederates with her, and thereupon they were all committed to prison; and Tituba being searched was said to have the marks of the Devil’s wounding her upon her body,[47] but more probably of Spanish cruelty. This was the first of March. About three weeks after two other women who were church-members and of good character, [Martha] Corey and [Rebecca] Nurse, were complained of, examined and would confess nothing, but were committed. Not only the three children, while the women were under examination, fell into their fits and had all their complaints, but the mother of one of the children and wife of Thomas Putnam complained of Nurse as tormenting her, and made most terrible shrieking to the amazement of all in the neighborhood. Such was the infatuation that a child[48] of Sarah Good, not above four or five years old, was committed also, being charged with biting the afflicted who showed the print of small teeth upon their arms. Soon after, April 3, Sarah Cloyse, sister to Nurse, being at meeting, and Mr. Parris taking for his text John vi. 70, “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a Devil?” she was offended and went out of meeting, and she was soon after complained of, examined and committed; and about the same time Elizabeth Proctor was charged; and, her husband accompanying her to her examination, he was complained of also, and both committed. The great imprudence, to say the best of it, in those who were in authority [Hathorne and Corwin, local magistrates], in encouraging and putting words into the mouths of the accusers, or suffering others to do it, will appear by the examination of these persons remaining upon the files of the court. The accusers and accused were brought before the court. Mr. Parris, who had been over-officious from the beginning, was employed to examine these,[49] and most of the rest of the accused.