Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/113

 full view, but removed from contact with the spectators; a separate place had been set apart for the accusers, and seats had been placed for the magistrates in front of the pulpit, and facing the people. After the magistrates had with much ceremony been ushered in and taken their appointed seats, the formal announcement was made that the court was now open, and ready to commence the examinations at once.

After prayer had been offered by one of the attending ministers, the constable produced the body of Mrs. Sarah Good, and placed her upon the stand.

If the case had not been such a solemn one, involving life or death, there must have been something almost laughably absurd in the palpable disproportion between the pitiful prisoner, on the one hand, and the array of learning, law, and evidence gathered against her upon the other.

She was a small, weak, miserable creature; a poor, helpless, friendless woman—worn down by a life of want and misery; a homeless vagrant, without character or subsistence; one for whom no one cared, whose