house of the person bewitched and borrow something. As, in
those early days, all articles of domestic use were scarce, and
neighbors depended on borrowing, many an old lady was amazed to find
herself refused, and was wholly unable to account for the sudden
coolness of persons, whom she had always loved.

Mr. Parris, the fanatic, fraud and schemer, perhaps did more to augment
witchcraft, than any other person in the colonies. Parris was ambitious.
The circle of young girls, as the reader will remember, first held their
seances at his home. Their young nervous systems were so wrought upon,
that, at their age in life, they were thrown into spasms resembling
epileptic fits. Instead of treating their disease scientifically, as
such cases would be treated at present, the parson foolishly declared
that they were bewitched. Those children could not have been wholly
impostors. They were deceived by the preachers and the zealous,
bloodthirsty bigots into actually believing some of the statements they
uttered. Their nerves were shattered, their imaginations wrought upon,
until they took almost any shape capricious fancy or the evil-minded
Parris would dictate.

When Charles Stevens arrived in Salem, instead of finding the dread
superstition a thing of the past, to be forgotten or remembered only
with a sense of shuddering shame, he found that the flame had been
fanned to a conflagration. Mr. Parris and Mr. Noyes contrived to preach
from their pulpits sermons on protean devils and monsters of the air,
until the more credulous of their congregations were almost driven to
insanity. One evening, as Parris was passing the home of Goody Vance,
she met him at the door, and, with a face blanched with fear and
annoyance, said:

"Mr. Parris, I am grievously annoyed with a witch in my churn."

"What does she do?" he asked.

"She prevents the butter from forming, and I have churned until my arms
seem as if they would drop off."

The parson's face grew grave, and, going to a certain tree, he broke
some switches from it and entered the house.

"Take the milk from the churn," he said. "Pour it into a skillet and
place the skillet on the coals before the fire."

This was done, and the astounded housewife, with her numerous children,
stood gazing at the pastor, who, with his white, cadaverous face, thin
lips and hooked nose, looked as if he might have power over the spirits
of darkness. He drew a chair up before the fire and, seating hims