Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/338

 prominently in its horrors, and whose demoniac performances had so shocked the public mind and dethroned all the calmer powers of reason, had become wearied of their deadly sport; or else, confident in their success hitherto, they had become reckless of consequences; but it is certain they went too far and struck too high.

They had accused the wife of Philip English, one of the most prominent merchants of Salem, who had escaped from jail, and saved her life by flight; and also the Rev. Samuel Williard, minister of the Old South Church, in Boston; and the mother-in-law of Justice Corwin, an estimable lady residing in Boston (probably because he was too passive at the trials to suit them); and now, in October, they ventured to accuse Mrs. Hale, the wife of the minister of the First Church in Beverly: her genuine excellence and sweet womanly graces and virtues were widely known; the community, through undoubting faith in her, became convinced of the daring perjury of the accusers, and their power was at an end. "Never was a revolution so sudden and so complete, and the