t the fact that while in Salem he had been inimical to the
party of Mrs. Ann Putnam makes the real source of the accusation not
problematical. He was formally accused by little Ann Putnam, who said
that one evening there came to her the apparition of a minister and
asked her to write her name in the devil's book; then appeared two women
in shrouds, who scolded the first wraith away; then the two women told
Ann that they were the ghosts of the first and second wives of Mr.
Burroughs, who had murdered them, and one of them showed to the child
the gaping wound which had been inflicted upon her. On such testimony as
this Mr. Burroughs, a man of high standing and deep learning, was
condemned to die.

Nor was this an isolated case; on the contrary, it was the rule. So
numerous grew the accusations that Sir William Phips, the first royal
governor, appointed a special court to try cases of witchcraft, and
nineteen in all suffered death upon such accusations as have been
instanced. At last the girls made the mistake--whether or not instigated
by Mrs. Putnam in these instances does not appear--of accusing persons
who could not possibly be suspected of such practices, even allowing the
possibility of the practices themselves. When they brought charges
against the Rev. Samuel Willard, one of the most eminent divines of
Boston, and Lady Phips, the wife of the governor, they were sharply
rebuked; and when they added to their list the name of Mistress Hale,
wife of the minister in Beverly and famous throughout the colony for her
saintly character, they ranged against them the best of all the people
of the country. Mr. Hale himself had been a believer in the accusations;
but now, when their falsity was thus proved to him, he changed his
allegiance and declared war against the perpetrators of the real crimes,
as he now saw those accusations to be. This was practically the end of
the insanity, and the death blow to the panic was given when some people
of Andover, on being accused, brought action for defamation of character
and thus removed the matter to its true tribunal. There were no more
accusations after that.

Some fourteen years afterward, one of the "Afflicted Children," Ann
Putnam, who had been the most active of all, made public confession in
the Salem church that she had been a cause of the shedding of innocent
blood. She declared, however, that she had not acted "out of anger,
malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no s