on our way going, ask him whether or no he would eat his supper: my
father answered me again, no, he could not eat any thing that night;
and so went to bed, and so I left him abed. And, the next morning, my
father came to me about sun-rising, and asked me to go with Abraham
Walcot to fetch a load of hay; and my father said he would try whether
or not he could cart up a load of peas. I do also testify that he had
no horse-kind near at home at that time."

John Gloyd, the hired man, with whom he had the lawsuit that had been
settled a day or two before by arbitrators, testified, in
corroboration of Parker, and to show that the latter could not have
had any thing to do with the fire, that he slept in the same room with
said Parker that night, and that he came to bed between nine and ten
o'clock in the evening, and never rose until the break of day. Gloyd's
wife testified to the same effect. There turned out to be no evidence
against Corey whatever, but abundant proof of his innocence. The
hard-working, "weary" old man was triumphantly acquitted. He thought,
however, from this high-handed and utterly groundless attempt to wrong
and ruin him, and from calumnious general statements that had been
made against him in the course of the trial, that it was time to put
a stop to the malignant and mischievous slanders which had been
current in the neighborhood. He instituted prosecutions of Procter and
others for defamation, and recovered against them all. After this, we
hear no more of him until he experienced religion and was received
into the First Church. Whether he and Procter became reconciled again
is not known. Probably they did; for they seem to have had points of
attraction, and each of them traits of kind-heartedness and
generosity, under a rather rough exterior. The manner in which they
bore themselves in their last hours is a matter of history, and stamps
them both with true manliness.