od people who are behind her all the way. He has even set up their plea so that Francis Nurse and Giles Corey will go up against the court first; these men will surely convince the judges that Mary should be given a sympathetic hearing. And behind all this moral support is the rock wall of the truth. If all else fails, Proctor must have told her, she has truth on her side. Because God damns all liars, Abigail and the other girls are going straight to hell. Mary may even be able to save her friends from eternal torment, by breaking up this conspiracy of lies.But in the end, as Mary well knows, everything will depend on whether or not the judges believe her story. The weakness of her story is obvious to everyone. She says the girls are lying. How does she know? Because she used to be one of the group. If we believe her now, it means she was lying before when she cried out witches with the rest. But if she was a liar then, how can we believe her now?^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT III, SCENE 5To answer this question, Danforth brings in Abigail, Mercy Lewis, Susanna Walcott, and Betty Parris. This is horribly unfair--four against one--but in a way there's no alternative. Somebody's lying here, and the only way to find out who is to face Mary with those she's accusing.Even if Proctor's plan had worked and the first two depositions hadn't backfired, the whole weight of his charge would still rest on the slender shoulders of Mazy Warren. If Abigail will not confess to lying--and from what we know of her this is unlikely--we'll have a case of Mary Warren's word against the girls'. And as Danforth says, "I have until this moment not the slightest reason to suspect that the children may be deceiving me."In all fairness to Danforth, here he is bending over backward to give Proctor's charge the benefit of the doubt. Much about Proctor is suspicious: his wife's in jail; he doesn't come to church but plows on Sunday; Mary's obviously been threatened by h...
