Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/122

 and was well instructed as to all that she was to say and do.

To this end she begins, like the other two, by declaring her entire innocence, at which the children appear to be greatly tormented; but as she begins to confess, the children grow quiet, and she herself becomes afflicted before the eyes of the magistrates and the awe-stricken crowd, who looked on in blind belief and shuddering horror.

The object of all this was undoubtedly to show that the moment she confessed her sin, and repented of it, she had broken loose from her compact with the devil, and her power to afflict others had ceased at once; and the devil was wreaking his vengeance upon her through some other of his many confederates.

By her confession and repentance, she had passed from the condition of an afflicter, and had herself become one of the afflicted ones, and an accuser, naming Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and others as afflicting and tormenting herself and the children.

Her whole story is full of absurd and