CHAPTER III.
The Circle in the Minister's House.
It would, perhaps be unfair to hold the Reverend Master Parris responsible for the wild doings that went on in the parsonage house during the winter evenings of 1691-2, in the face of his solemn assertion, made several years afterwards, that he was ignorant of them.
And yet, how could such things have been without the knowledge either of himself or his wife?
Mistress Parris has come down to us with the reputation of a kindly and discreet woman--nothing having been said to her discredit, so far as I am aware, even by those who had a bitter controversy with her husband.

And yet she certainly must have known of the doings of the famous "circle," even if she refrained from speaking of them to her husband.
At the very bottom of the whole thing, perhaps, were the West Indian slaves--"John Indias" and his wife Tituba, whom Master Parris had brought with him from Barbados.

There were two children in the house, a little daughter of nine, named Elizabeth; and Abigail Williams, three years older.

These very probably, Tituba often had sought to impress, as is the manner of negro servants, with tales of witchcraft, the "evil-eye" and "evil hand" spirits, powwowing, etc.

Ann Putnam, another precocious child of twelve, the daughter of a near neighbor, Sergeant Putnam, the parish clerk, also was soon drawn into the knowledge of the savage mysteries.