Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/231

 against what you call the evidence of your senses, and I can not hope to convey to your mind the convictions of my own. But this much I may and I do ask of you: Do not attempt by reasoning or by ridicule to combat what I in my own secret soul fully believe. I do not, I can not attempt to account for the transactions of this night; but my conviction of their reality is as firmly fixed as is my belief in heaven; and your arguments, however much they may wound and distress me, can never convince me.

"Let this subject, then, be dropped between us now and forever. I shall keep my belief until my dying day, and you may keep your unbelief as long as you can; but I do ask that the matter shall never be divulged to friend or foe. If it has come from the invisible world (it may be a warning—I know not), we are, of course, powerless to contend against it; if it is (as it may be) the result of earthly malice, our only safety is in silence. I am too well aware that I have already given offense to the evil ones who seem to rule the hour, by the earnest zeal that I have manifested in behalf of my