Abigail Williams fell to the earth in a fit.
After lying rigid in the roadway a few minutes, she rose with a shudder, exclaiming, ‘‘You have torn his coat, I heard it rip!”
“Whereabouts?” Hutchinson asked.
“On the side,” she replied. "Do not you see the great rent in his garment?"
Naturally, Hutchinson saw no such thing, and said so.
A little later the same day Hutchinson met the child in the house of Lieutenant Ingersol, and she at once manifested every symptom of ungovernable terror, crying, "There he stands! Do not you see him there in the comer?”
The man, now thoroughly convinced the girl really saw some supernatural visitant, advanced upon the shadowy corner of the room, drawing his sword as he walked; but before he had gone four paces, Abigail shrieked, “He is gone; but there stands a gray cat in his place!”
At that Hutchinson struck his rapier through the empty air where the phantom cat was supposed to be crouching, and, in the words of the record, “thereupon she fell into a fit, and when it was over, she said, ‘You killed her’.”
Now mark how ingeniously this shameless little impostor played upon the superstitious credulity of the man. Half unwilling to be beguiled by her words, yet half fearful she really had seen some evidence of witchcraft, Hutchinson protested he saw no cat’s carcass on the floor, but the little maid replied, “Oh, the shade of Sarah Good came and carried her away."
Sarah Good was one of the poor old women who waited execution by hanging in Ipswich jail at the time, and her conviction had been procured largely on the testimony of Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam. Though she had probably never heard the word, Abigail Williams was a shrewd practical psychologist. Having prepared Hutchinson’s superstitious mind by her imposing cries and fainting fits, she chose this moment to strengthen the already impregnable case which popular ignorance and credulity had made against poor, friendless old Sarah Good.
The jury impaneled to try George Burroughs gave little time to considering their verdict. He was found guilty as charged, and sentenced to be hanged on Gallows Hill August 19, 1692.
One of the current superstitions was that persons who had really sold their souls to Satan could not repeat the Lord’s prayer correctly; but at the gibbet’s foot George Burroughs recited the beautiful petition from beginning to end with great fervor and beauty, and quoted from the Book of Job: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."
The “afflicted children”, who had gathered on Gallows Hill to see their victim die, attempted to drown out the sound of his words by shrieking that a great, black man stood at his shoulder, dictating the prayer and Scriptural passages to him.
Townsmen of Salem, assembled to see Satan’s servant pay the price of his wickedness, were thunderstruck when they heard the holy words fall from the convicted wizard’s lips.
“This man is no witch,” a murmur ran through the crowd. “Save him; stop the execution; we commit murder!” The people pressed forward to take the condemned preacher from the hangman.
