Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/71

 no clearly defined intention or even perception of the awful sin to the commission of which their deeds were rapidly leading them; they had begun in sport, or at best without consideration—in a spirit, it might be, of unholy curiosity and merry malice; possibly the widespread notoriety they had attracted would, at the first, have more than satisfied their ambition. It is doubtful to what extent they had learned to believe in their own pretensions; but they had gone too far to retrace their steps, even if they had wished to do so; the feverish excitement around them carried them along with it; they had "sowed the whirlwind, and they must reap the storm." If they had any misgivings, any doubts of their own demoniac power, the full, free faith in it expressed by all around them may have confirmed their own wavering belief, called out into force their unholy ambition, and overwhelmed every better and more human feeling.

Up to this time they had accused no one as the author of their sufferings; but it was the common and universally received