Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/153

 at first a believer in the sufferings of the "afflicted children;" but many others of the family circle, and among them the beloved and venerable mother, refused credence to their pretensions, and had absented themselves from attendance at the village church in consequence of the great and scandalous disturbances which they created there.

It is also noticeable that the Nurse family had been opposed to the party or faction who had been so zealous in favor of Mr. Bayley, the former minister, and they had thus drawn upon themselves the ill-will of Mrs. Ann Putnam, who had been one of his most zealous partisans, and was now one of the most fanatical of the accusers.

Mrs. Nurse, who was a free-spoken, active body, had taken a decided part in these church discussions: it is singular to note how in all parish difficulties the female portion are the most zealous, the most belligerent, and the most vituperative. No doubt Mrs. Nurse had been free in the expression of her sentiments upon both these subjects—it was the nature of the woman to be so; and unfriendly remarks about the children, any doubt of the