Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/72

 doctrine or belief that the devil could not act upon mortals, or in mortal affairs, by his own immediate and direct power, but only through the agency of human beings who were in confederacy with him; and now the question naturally arose on all sides, "Who are the devil's agents in this work? who is it thus afflicting these children? There must be some one among us who is thus acting—and who is it?"

No one could tell. Men looked around them with hungry eyes, eager to trace the devil's agents; and the question was pressed home upon the girls by every one, "If you are thus tormented—if you are pricked with pins, and pinched, and beaten, and choked, and strangled—tell us who it is that does it; surely you must know—tell us, then, who it is that has thus bewitched you."

Thus importuned on every hand, they could no longer withstand the pressure; their power was at stake, and their sinful ambition forbade them to recant.

Timidly at first they breathed out their terrible accusations; unconscious it may be then of the death-dealing nature of their