Absurd as such an explanation seems to us, it must be remembered that, with rare exceptions, every one at that time believed in witchcraft. It found an apparent confirmation in the text, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus xxii., 18), and the great legal authorities of England, Bacon, Blackstone, Coke, Selden, and Matthew Hale, had given decisions implying the fact of witchcraft and indicating the various degrees of guilt. It was easier to accept this explanation since executions for this crime had already taken place at Charlestown, Dorchester, Cambridge, Hartford and Springfield. Governor Winthrop, Governor Bradstreet and Governor Endicott had each sentenced a witch to death. Governor Endicott had pronounced judgment upon a person so important as Mistress Ann Hibbins, widow of a rich merchant and the sister of Governor Bellingham, familiar to us all in the pages of _The Scarlet Letter_. A few years before, Cotton Mather, the distinguished young divine of Boston, had published a work affirming his belief in witchcraft and detailing his study of some bewitched children in Charlestown, one of whom he had taken into his own family the better to observe. It is not surprising, therefore, that these young girls, instead of being punished for mischievous conduct or treated for nervous derangement, were pitied as the victims of some malevolent persons and urged to name their tormentors. Encouraged by the verdict of physician and ministers, countenanced by Mr. Parris and the church-members, these “afflicted children,” as they and some other girls and women similarly affected in the village were now called, began their accusations. The first persons mentioned were Tituba, the Indian slave, Goody Osborn, a bedridden woman whose mind was affected by many troubles, physical and mental, and Sarah Good, a friendless, forlorn creature, looked upon as a vagrant. [Illustration: WITCH PINS.]