Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/51

Next day a conference was held in the parsonage of Salem Village Church. The Reverend Samuel Parris, pastor of the congregation, Edward Putnam and Ezekiel Cheever talked earnestly of the state of affairs.

But twelve days ago Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, both old women of Salem Village, and Tituba, the half-breed Indian slave of Mr. Parris himself, had been remanded to jail as witches, there to await execution on the gallows. Ann Putnam and a number of other young girls and women had been their chief accusers, declaring Goody Good and Goody Osburn had "greviously afflicted" them with pains and torments. With the arrest and imprisonment of the witches, the good citizens of Salem had breathed a sigh of relief, for, though the Devil was mighty, the Lord, aided by the Reverend Samuel Parris and the Salem magistrates, was mightier, and righteousness had triumphed over wickedness. Now, alas! another witch had risen to plague the congregation.

"Didst say 'twas Goodwife Corey?" the minister asked, interest—perhaps something more—in his deep-set eyes.

"Aye," Putnam answered. "Goodwife Corey, the child said, astride her broomstick—"

"This matter needs our service," Mr. Parris interrupted. "My brethren, let us pray; then you must away to Salem Farms to question this wretched woman."

In Salem Farms, where the town of West Peabody now stands, was the substantial farmhouse of Giles Corey, husbandman. Corey was past his eightieth birthday; but a better man in strength and endurance than many only half his age. Neighbors told wonderingly how he could cut a wider swath with the scythe than any man in the hay field, how he had been known to lift a keg of cider to his mouth and drink from the bunghole as though from a mug, and how a drunken farmhand, relying on the old man's age to render him feeble, had paid for his folly with his life when he made a murderous assault on his employer. The laborer had attacked Corey with a flail, and the old man had defended himself so stoutly with his bare fists that the other subsequently died of the beating he received.

Several of the neighbors had little cause to love Giles Corey. When some of them had wrongfully accused him of burning another's barn he had an action for slander against them, and won substantial damages.

Corey's wife, Martha, wras his third spouse, and a fitting mate for him. Though past sixty, she could turn out more work than any woman in the neighborhood, and the uniform perfection of her butter and constantly healthy condition of her chickens and geese were matters for envious conversation among other farmwives. Some there were who hinted darkly that her good luck came not alone from industry and the "know how", but might be attributed to the sort of help no Christian woman dare accept.

Another cause the neighbors had to regard the Coreys askance was their attitude toward the arrests for witchcraft. When residents of the village and farms alike were crying out upon Goody Osburn and Goody Good, the Coreys stood aloof, Martha Corey declaring she would not convict a dog of egg-sucking on the testimony of hysterical children. As for Tituba, the minister's Indian slave, who had confessed herself a witch and implicated Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn with her, Goodwife Corey had hinted the Indian woman's pious master knew more about that confession than he cared to tell.

Ann Putnam, the twelve-year-old girl whose testimony, without cross-examination, had sworn away the