uch thing against one
of them, but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded of Satan." This
latter declaration has been generally interpreted to mean that Ann was
even then, at the age of twenty-five, convinced that she had had actual
communion with the powers of darkness--in other words, that she was a
self-deceived seer of visions. The theory is open to doubt. Ann's words
are at least susceptible of another interpretation; and, whether they
were intended to bear this meaning or not, it may well be that she was
"deluded of Satan" under the form of Mistress Ann Putnam, her mother.
The complicity of Mr. Parris, the minister, is probable; but there is
little doubt that the moving spirit of the conspiracy, after this had
gained strength and purpose, was Mistress Ann Putnam. She was a
brilliant woman in many ways, a fact which is not at all incompatible
with the further fact that she was a moral degenerate, or at least a
monomaniac. It is most probable that she directed the whole progress of
the conspiracy, which at first arose in opportunity by the accident of
the teaching of the old Indian woman and its effect upon some hysterical
girls, who saw before them a chance to become notorious, and that she
worked it throughout to her own ends, persuading the girls that, having
once embarked upon such an enterprise, their sole safety consisted in
playing the game to its finish. Possibly she also was to some extent
self-deceived; she was a descendant of the Carrs of Salisbury, who were
noted as being very nervous and excitable, and she was herself of the
most irritable and sanguine temperament. But it seems little probable
that she was a victim rather than a ruler in the insanity which came of
her fostering, for not only were her daughter and servant the most
prominent members of the "Afflicted Children," but it was her personal
enemies who first disappeared into the shadows of death, and it was her
hand which guided the accusation that smote every victim, until the
reign of terror grew beyond even her control. She stands as the female
Robespierre of America, slaying for lust of power and afterward for fear
of losing her own head; and she remains one of the most picturesque and
yet gruesome figures that our history has produced.

We shall leave this ominous figure standing on the threshold of New
England as we turn southward to inquire as to the conditions existent in
the other great colony of English America; but on our way it is