Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/340

 this cruel refinement of extortion, these helpless beings, who had already had their homes and possessions despoiled, were reduced in many instances to utter impoverishment.

In looking back upon this terrible tragedy, even after the long lapse of years, there seems to be no way to account for it by any of the known and recognized laws of the human mind; the actors in it seem to have been utterly reckless of consequences to others, and totally incapable of human feeling. There is no mention on record of their being once moved by natural pity for the sufferings they wrought; and in one instance, one of the girls explained her unfounded charge as having been "only in sport—we must have some sport." And they seem to have been in a gay, frivolous state of mind, as if totally unconscious of the death-dealing nature of their accusations; and even after the delusion had passed by, although some few of the older and more important persons involved in this fearful loss of life have left a noble record of their true repentance and remorse for the delusion into which they had suffered themselves to be drawn, the girls