CHAPTER XXXIX.
The Rattlesnake Makes a Spring.
It was a Thursday afternoon, and the "afflicted circle" was having one of its informal meetings at the house of Mistress Ann Putnam.

At these meetings the latest developments were talked over; and all the scandal of the neighborhood, and even of Boston and other towns, gathered and discussed.

Thus in the examination of Captain Alden in addition to the material charges of witchcraft against him, which I have noted, were entirely irrelevant slanders of the grossest kind against his moral character which the "afflicted girls" must have gathered from very low and vulgar sources.
The only man present on this occasion was Jethro Sands; and the girls, especially Leah Herrick, could not but wonder who now was to be "cried out against," that Jethro was brought into their counsels.
It is a curious natural instinct which leads every faculty--even the basest--to crave more food in proportion to the extent in which it has been already gratified.

In the first place, the "afflicted" girls no doubt had their little spites, revenges, and jealousies to indulge, but afterwards they seemed to "cry out" against those of whom they hardly knew anything, either to oblige another of the party, or to punish for an expressed disbelief in their sincerity, or even out of the mere wantonness of power to do evil.
Mistress Ann Putnam opened the serious business of the afternoon, after an hour or so had been spent in gossip and tale-bearing, by an account of some recent troubles of hers.
"A few nights ago," said she, "I awakened in the middle of the night with choking and strangling.

I knew at once that a new 'evil hand' was upon me; for the torment was different from any I had ever experienced.
I thought the hand that grasped me around the throat would have killed me--and there was a heavy weight upon my breast, so that I could hardly breathe.