Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/73

 words, they named three persons—Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and the slave woman Tituba—as the persons who thus afflicted them.

The children were inimitable actors; they were well trained, and had studied their parts carefully; their acting was perfect, but it would seem there must have been a master-mind acting as prompter and stage-manager; had there been no other evidence of this concealed, maturer mind, the wonderful sagacity with which they selected these first victims must have forced the conviction upon us.

Sarah Good was an object of prejudice in the village; her husband had deserted her; she was a poor, forlorn, destitute creature of ill-repute, without any regular home, begging her way from door to door; one for whom no one cared, and whom no one would regret. Sarah Osburn was a poor, sick creature; she, too, was unhappy in her domestic relations; care and grief had worn her; she was bedridden, and depressed in mind, if not actually distracted; she, too, was an easy victim. The third, Tituba, was the master