Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/55

 interfere and stop them, and I think so too. But, as she said, if the minister allowed it, who could venture to do any thing to stop them?

"So then they sent for Dr. Griggs (his niece, Elizabeth Hubbard, is one of them), and he could not make out what ailed them; and he said he thought they must be bewitched!

"And Mr. Parris has had a meeting of all the neighboring ministers at his own house; and they talked to the children, and prayed over them; but they did not get any satisfaction. And now they all say the children are bewitched. Goody Nurse says she don't believe a word of it, and that Mr. Parris ought to have stopped it at once, in the first of it, as he might easily have done. She said he was not her minister, and she was glad he was not; but if he had been, she would not go, to have such a shameful disturbance.

"And now, grannie, they all believe the children are bewitched; and every one is asking, 'Who can it be? Who are the witches that make all this trouble?' And