Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/121

 "Alas! I have been sick, and not able to go."

Here the examination of this prisoner, for the time, was ended, and she was removed. Certainly there seems to have been nothing elicited by this pointless questioning which could criminate the poor creature; and when we take into consideration the weakness of body and mind under which she was avowedly laboring, being half bed-ridden, and crazy, as her answers plainly show, she not being able to distinguish whether things she thought she saw and heard were dreams or realities, it would seem as if it must have been evident to any fair and impartial mind that, though her reason was clouded, her nature was essentially innocent and truthful.

The next one brought upon the stand was Tituba, the Indian slave-woman. As we have already said, this would seem to have been a stroke of policy. The fact of her having been one of their own number being calculated to disarm suspicion, while it is evident she had been in full council with the accusers, was under their control,