Such natural laws as reign supreme in spirit-realms may have led to the selection of secluded, inoffensive, "essentially truthful, and innocent" Sarah Osburn, as one of the tormentors of the girls, who were either schooled in magic by their own elected study and practice of it, or were constitutionally fitted for fitful enfranchisement of their inner perceptive organs while yet dwellers in their mortal forms, and whose bodies could become tools for other minds to use. If she was simply the voluntary actor out of her own "cunning or imposture," little Ann Putnam, twelve years old, brightest among the bright, and member of one of the most intelligent and religious families of the Village, she also must have been herself a _devil_, and so devilishly a devil, that even Cloven-foot might feel it a duty to pass his scepter into her hands. But grant that she was a medium through whose form other minds and wills could act, as she in fact was, and then we can regard her physical form as simply an instrument through which an intelligence other than herself manifested action to human senses; and thus we can deem _her_ guiltless, whatever shall be our judgment of the intruding performer upon her "harp of a thousand strings." Parts of the testimony in the case of Mrs. Osburn reveal her possession of mediumistic susceptibilities. As with Joan of Arc and many others, so with this woman; the inner ear could hear voices from some source impalpable by external senses. "(It was said by some in the meeting-house that she had said that she would never be tied to that lying spirit any more.) "_Q._ 'What lying spirit is this? Hath the devil ever deceived you and been false to you?' "_A._ 'I do not know the _devil_. I never did see him.' "_Q._ 'What lying spirit was it, then?' "_A._ 'It was a _voice_ that I thought I heard.' "_Q._ 'What did it propound to you?' "_A_. 'That I should go no more to meeting. But I said I would; and did go the next Sabbath day.'"--_Woodward's Hist. Series_, No. I. p. 37.