The shrinking, timid girl of a moment before stood up serene but heroic, fearless and undaunted; prepared to assert the truth, and to defy all the malice of her enemies, if need be, to the martyr's death.
And she had need of all her courage.

For, before three minutes had passed--Squire Hathorne pausing to look over the deposition on which the arrest had been made--Mistress Ann Putnam shrieked out, "Turn her head away, she is tormenting us! See, her yellow-bird is whispering to her!" And with that, she and her little daughter Ann, and Abigail Williams and Sarah Churchill and Leah Herrick and several others, flung themselves down on the floor in apparent convulsions.
"Oh, a snake is stinging me!" cried Leah Herrick.
"Her black horse is trampling on my breast!" groaned Sarah Churchill.
"Make her look away; turn her head!" cried several in the crowd.

And one of the constables caught Dulcibel by the arm, and turned her around roughly.
"This is horrible!" cried Thomas Putnam--"and so young and fair-looking, too!" "Ah, they are the worst ones, Master Putnam," said his sympathetic friend, the Rev.Master Parris.
"She looks young and pretty, but she may really be a hundred years old," said deacon Snuffles.
Quiet at last being restored, Magistrate Hathorne said: "Dulcibel Burton, why do you torment Mistress Putnam and these others in this grievous fashion ?" "I do not torment them," replied Dulcibel calmly, but a little scornfully.
"Who does torment them, then ?" "How should I know--perhaps Satan." "What makes you suppose that Satan torments them ?" "Because they tell lies." "Do you know that Satan cannot torment these people except through the agency of other human beings ?" "No, I do not." "Well, he cannot--our wisest ministers are united upon that.

Is it not so, Master Parris ?" "That is God's solemn truth," was the reply.
"Who is it that torments you, Mistress Putnam ?" continued Squire Hathorne, addressing Mistress Ann Putnam, who had sent so many already to prison and on the way to death.
Mistress Putnam was angered beyond measure at Dulcibel's intimation that she and her party were instigated and tormented directly by the devil.
And yet she could not, if she would, bear falser witness than she already had done against Rebecca Nurse and other women of equally good family and reputation.

But at this appeal of the Magistrate, she flung her arms into the air, and spoke with the vehemence and excitement of a half-crazy woman.
"It is she, Dulcibel Burton.