Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/168

 to bring his prisoners into the meeting-house in Salem on April eleventh.

This was not to be an examination before the two local magistrates, as the others had been, but before the highest legal tribunal in the colony—the Honorable Thomas Danforth, deputy governor, and his council being present.

But we do not propose to give the details of these trials; it is enough to say that the consummate tact and boldness of the accusing girls deluded every body.

No necromancers have ever surpassed them in sleight-of-hand and simulation. It has been said that in their strange performances, in which they had now perfected themselves by long practice, they equaled the ancient sorcerers and magicians. Of their fearful blasphemies, the horrible inventions, the monstrous fancies of the devil-worship, the fiendish sacraments, and other revolting ritual of which they accused their victims, we can only say that, while it was fully calculated to produce an overwhelming effect upon minds so imbued with a belief in all the superstitions of those days, they are to