Prior to March 1, the malady seems to have spread out beyond the parsonage and seized upon other persons, for on that day several afflicted ones were convened as witnesses, or accusers, or both, at the place where the magistrates then appeared for attending to the cases of three women who had been accused of witchcraft, arrested, and held for examination. Here was the commencement of reputed folly and barbarity so exercised as soon to redden that region with the blood of the innocent, the manly, the virtuous, and the devout.
Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba were brought into the meeting-house as suspected witches and as producers of the sufferings of the several afflicted ones, to be examined in the presence of their accusers and the public. What course the magistrates either elected or were constrained to pursue in order to educe such facts as would sustain a charge for witchcraft, will reveal itself as we proceed, through the questions which they put to the accused, and the kinds of evidence which they admitted.
"_Tituba, the Indian woman, examined March 1, 1692._
"_Q._ Why do you hurt these poor children? What harm have they done unto you?
"_A._ They do no harm to me. I no hurt them at all."
The first question by the magistrates implies the presence there of the afflicted children, and of their then seeming to be invisibly hurt. It also implies the magistrate's assumption that Tituba was hurting them. Her denial that either they had harmed her or that she was hurting them was distinct. But the magistrate seemingly doubted its truth or its sufficiency, for he next asked,--
"_A._ I have done nothing. I can't tell when the devil works.
"_Q._ What? Doth the devil tell you that he hurts them?
She conceded here that the _Devil_ might be, and probably was, at work upon the children; but _his_ doings were beyond the reach of her perceptive faculties. _He_ made no communication to her. Thus early her words indicate that her knowledge of spiritual matters caused her to draw and adhere to a distinction between _The Devil_ and either _a Spirit_, or bands of spirits, which distinction she and other mediumistic ones of her times adhered to, while the public lacked knowledge that facts required it, and ignorantly called all visitants from spirit realms _The Devil_.