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Updated: June 18, 2025
Mistress Parris, John Indian and the rest were by this time at the side of the pond, and ready to receive the chapfallen minister as he emerged with the saddle and the broken bridle from the water. "You are a sight, Samuel Parris!" said his wife, in that pleasant tone with which many wives are apt to receive their liege lords upon such unpleasant occasions. "Do get into the house at once.
When it was afterward repeated to her she said that by the coming among us she meant that they had been in prison together. But the jury adopted the court's interpretation of the word as signifying an acknowledgment that they had met at a witch orgy. The Governor was disposed to grant her a pardon. But Parris, who had an ancient grudge against her, interfered and prevailed.
Parris was given to understand that, in their judgment, the Churches of Messrs. Allen and Willard ought also to be invited. He bitterly resented this, and saw that it sealed his fate; but felt the necessity of yielding to it.
"Would you believe your eyes, young sceptic?" "I might even doubt my own eyes." "Wherefore would you?" "Nothing is more deceptive than sight; optical delusions are common. Did you see a witch?" "Not myself; but others did." "Who?" "John, Tituba and Ann Parris saw the witches dancing on the ceiling, with their feet up and their heads down."
"The delusion, but for Parris, would have languished. Of his own niece, the girl of eleven years of age, he demanded the names of the devil's instruments, who bewitched the band of 'the afflicted, and then became at once informer and witness.
At this Charles Stevens again laughed and answered: "Verily you are mad, Mr. Parris, to believe what those lying negroes say. They have persuaded the child into the belief that she sees strange sights." Mr. Parris became greatly excited and cried: "The maid sees the shape of Goody Nurse and the black man at night. They come and choke her, to make her sign the book." "What book?"
The truth no doubt is that Master Noyes, Master Parris, Cotton Mather, and all the other ministers, with one or two exceptions, having committed themselves fully to the prosecution of the witches, would listen to nothing that tended to prove that the principal witnesses were deliberate and malicious liars; and that, so far as the other witnesses were concerned, they were grossly superstitious and deluded persons.
Parris, the wild-eyed fanatic, swinging his arms about, walked up and down the village, crying against the evil spirits of the air and longing to get his clutches on the vile actor, who had dared enter the consecrated village of Salem. One evening Mr. Waters returned as mysteriously as he had disappeared.
Parris believed himself a righteous and holy man, walking in the path of the just. Charles Stevens failed to tell his mother of the strange interview with the pastor, somehow he could not. He unaccountably shuddered when he thought of it, and, despite the fact that he had little superstition in his composition, he felt at times a strange instinctive dread at the awful warning of the pastor.
Charles made no answer to this, for there is no wrath like the wrath of an angry preacher, whose zeal warps his judgment and makes a fanatic of him. Bigoted, tyrannical, haughty and cruel, Parris swooped down on his enemies with the fury of an eagle. Charles Stevens was a little amazed at the manner of the minister and asked: "Is your business with me?" "It is." "What is it?"
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