CHAPTER VIII.
An Examination of Reputed Witches.
Warrants had been duly issued against Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and the Indian woman Tituba, and they were now to be tried for the very serious offence of bewitching the "afflicted children." One way that the witches of that day were supposed to work, was to make images out of rags, like dolls, which they named for the persons they meant to torment.

Then, by sticking pins and needles into the dolls, tightening cords around their throats, and similar doings, the witches caused the same amount of pain as if they had done it to the living objects of their enmity.
In these cases, the officers who executed the warrants of arrest, stated "that they had made diligent search for images and such like, but could find none." On the day appointed for the examination of these poor women, the two leading magistrates of the neighborhood, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, rode up the principal street of the village attended by the marshal and constables, in quite an imposing array.

The crowd was so great that they had to hold the session in the meeting-house The magistrates belonged to the highest legislative and judicial body in the colony.

Hathorne, as the name was then spelt, was the ancestor of the gifted author, Nathaniel Hawthorne--the alteration in the spelling of the name probably being made to make it conform more nearly to the pronunciation.

Hathorne was a man of force and ability--though evidently also as narrow-minded and unfair as only a bigot can be.