Tituba, in her confession, had implicated the two women, Good and Osburn, and "two others whose faces she could not see"; and the girls were importuned to name these other "tormentors." At first they refused,--probably because they had not held council to decide on the two to be named,--but at last they indicated two of the most estimable women in the community, Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse, aged respectively sixty and (about) seventy years. The village was thunderstruck, for these women, if not of the highest rank, were full of courtesy and kindliness and were well-educated and well-bred. None the less, they were accused, Goodwife Corey by little Ann Putnam,--at whose instigation it seems unnecessary to suggest,--Goodwife Nurse, whose husband was one of the most honored persons in the village, while she herself was regarded as a model of virtue and piety, by more than one of "The Afflicted Children," as the girls were now called; but the bearing of Mistress Putnam at the examination was sufficient to show where stood the chief accuser. The girls went into their regular fits at each answer to the questions, unshamed by the sight of the venerable lady standing there in her dainty dress and with her fragile figure and pure face; and Mrs. Putnam broke in on the magistrate's questions with "Did you not bring the black man with you? Did you not bid me tempt God and die? How oft have you eaten and drunk your own damnation?" It is no wonder that the accused, at such a horrible outburst of vindictive hate,--as she must have known it to be,--raised her hands to heaven with the cry, "O Lord, help me!" But at that the "Afflicted Children" went into the most extraordinary convulsions; and the foolish magistrate, Hathorne by name, who had until then been favorably inclined toward the prisoner, connected the spasms of the girls with the uplifted hands of the old lady, and this turned the tide against her. She was remanded for trial.