The little Carrier children were very instructive witnesses. Too young and inexperienced to do otherwise than answer simple questions directly in such language as was common, they show us of to-day, better than do older witnesses, what was probably common application of some terms of very frequent use in descriptions of things marvelous. When by implication charged with being themselves witches, their answers conceded the truth of the charge. One of them, eight years old, said she had been a witch ever since she was six. Another, eighteen years old, had been a witch about five weeks, and said that brother Andrew had been such "near a month." Little did these frank and no doubt truthful young confessors of family and personal experiences deem that they were exposing themselves, and their mother also, to punishment by death. What they confessed to were frequent sights and sounds in their home, which came as naturally and innocently before them as the visits and words of friends and neighbors. Community called such matters witchcrafts, and why should not these children do the same? Their mental powers were not expanded enough to even entertain the slightest apprehension that what they were saying could imply that they had made a compact with the devil, or that a simple, true statement of their unsought experiences could bring harm to themselves or any one else. Equally incompetent were such little ones to comprehend the nature of that devil who existed in the conception of the magistrate when he asked whether the devil had insnared the witness and brother Andrew. They, no doubt, held the common notion that any worker whatsoever from realms unseen by the external eye was the devil; and having had experience--at least one of them had--that her own spirit had gone forth from her body and pinched certain persons, she understood that she had performed a part in works which were imputed to the devil. Still neither of these children confessed, or could be "insnared" to own, that they had seen _the devil_.