Harry Potter Morning Light.

Chapter 1720 The Secret Words of the Goddess (65)
Samuel Parris was not a bad guy, he was just a young pastor whose life forced him to go to Salem.

He hoped to bring a different spiritual civilization to the village. He tried to include his own arguments in his sermons, and he would chatter about something, which often made him feel powerless, because the believers under the pulpit had no idea what he was saying. No reaction.

In fact, what the villagers want to hear more from the pastor is comfort. This is what the old priests used to provide them, but they rarely get it here in Paris.

Paris is a man who doesn't give up easily, which is also his stubborn side, but her insistence does not lead to any improvement, his wages are owed, and a campaign to fire him is brewing.

Just like how he felt when he first saw Salem, he would be buried alive in this place, and worse, he would freeze to death before suffocating, firewood was still short, and he and his family I had to shiver in the snowy and windy weather.

The winter from 1691 to 1692 was extremely cold. The bread in the communion plate and the ink in the pen were frozen, and the cold wind blew in from the chimney. When Paris preached, sometimes there would be one after another. There were coughs and sneezes, and some people even shuffled with chilblains on their feet.

He shortened his sermons to make things more comfortable for each other.Apart from quarreling with the villagers, Paris has other jobs. One second he was studying theology, and the next he was grooming his mare. If he was truly loved and respected by the villagers, these jobs should have been done by someone. Do it for you.

He had to do everything himself, including repairing the garden fence, but he had to leave that job to lead a prayer meeting.

His wife, Elizabeth, who was five years older than Paris and was a member of the First Church in Boston before their marriage, now sits in the pews in Salem with the five Putnam wives.

She was a pious, kind, obedient woman, mild-tempered and well-behaved, who owed the excellence of Massachusetts education to the rudimentary literacy every New Englander had needed since the School Establishment Act of 1647.

A wise father will not let his children waste food, and a wise mother will not rode and discipline his children. Paris will pray and read the Bible with his family every morning and evening, and his servants need to do the same, Elizabeth The girls will be taught to read and write.

At the same time as she wanted to make the almost run-down house comfortable, she read and discussed the Bible with the children of the family anyway, and later added a member, 12-year-old Ann Putnam, who was Daughter of Paris loyalist Thomas Putnam.

Paris's obstinacy and preaching improved a little, slowly but still, until in the second half of January 1692, when the Indians attacked York County and razed it to the ground, the priest was scalped and died in On the doorstep of his own house, the news was originally blocked by the heavy snow, but gradually spread as the thawing period came.

Indians always grunt, and the whispers sound like devil's music, so in New England the word grunt signifies evil and rebellion, and when there are many grunters, riots are not far off.

The people of Salem also heard about this incident, but it had little effect on them. The existence of this village is also related to its ability to avoid Indian attacks. The locals call it the City of Hills, which comes from the Bible. is blessed by God.

But even in such a peaceful little village there were murmurs and whispers of strange things that had happened at the vicar's house.

Paris hired the only licensed doctor in town, William Griggs, also recently in Salem, to see his daughter and niece, but the doctor couldn't do anything about it, and worse, Thomas Putnam's Daughter Ann and Griggs' maid also fell ill one after another, with the same symptoms as Paris' nieces Abigail and Betty.

The young Dr. William invited the old Dr. Griggs, who was more experienced and had been to many places. The old Dr. Griggs believed that William brought the epidemic back home, and he gave the Paris family The girl judged that it was a digestive disorder, but he refused to treat the Paris girl on the second visit.

The doctor ordered everyone in the village to fast, but people's mouths would be idle if they stopped chewing. "Devil's hand" is a "diagnosis" generally accepted by the townspeople.

The news spread as wildly as the Indian attack on York County, New Englanders may not believe in unicorns and mermaids, but they do believe in witches.

It is strange that witchcraft is welcome, as long as it is not the victim's own family, but before Paris, the devil had never appeared in a priest's house.

This caught the attention of another pastor, who rushed to Salem without stopping to investigate the matter.

Cotton Mather is ten years younger than Paris, but unlike the hapless Paris, he is only 29 years old and has already become famous. He is gradually becoming the most famous man in New England. He is not only tall and handsome, but also talented and tireless. He worked hard, entered Harvard at the age of 11, started his first sermon at the age of 16, and led two exorcisms in Massachusetts.

Such a "superstar" cannot be kept in a place like Salem, and the purpose of his coming to Salem is to see the enchanted house.

Paris was full of hostility towards him, and during his public sermons he warned parishioners that "the wrath of God has sent vandals."

If you put yourself in Paris' shoes, anyone would feel that fate is unfair. Even if his daughter and niece have been screaming at home for a month, it is still his home, not the "devil's lair" as Mather said. .

Mather regarded exorcism as a game of grace and danger, and he conceited that he could handle any situation.

However, it was raining heavily at this time. The rain seemed to be leaking, or someone was splashing water, and it continued to rain.

In such bad weather, Paris and his wife Elizabeth left home, leaving their daughter and niece in the care of their neighbor Mary Sibley.

In Fuqi, where the local family is better, she and her husband who is a tube repairer can be regarded as the mainstay of the church. Samuel Sibley will intervene every time there is property to be disposed of or a contract needs to be guaranteed. The family is also very contented.

The only thing that makes Mary unhappy is the speed with which Paris solves the puzzle, so she arranges a secret experiment.

It was at this time that Essex County became a seething and turbulent place, as continuous heavy rains combined with the melting of winter snows caused rivers to swell and overflow their banks, flooding homes, washing away Sheng, and destroying mills and bridges. A muddy swamp.

People who were doing disaster relief heard what happened in Salem. Thomas Putnam greeted other pastors in Salem and returned to the town.

Originally, Paris brought slaves, but one of the young girls died of illness shortly after arriving in Salem, so Paris bought an Indian slave, who stayed at home with Mary Sibley to take care of the children .

Mary wanted to find out what was causing the torment to the children, so she had Indian slaves collect the girls' urine, bake it into a cake, and throw it to a dog.

Paris was furious when he found out, anti-magic was not allowed in the pastor’s home, and the pastors from Boston also thought of him, or for the sake of the church, concealed this experiment, and took great pains to suppress people’s identification of witches.

Obsession is not the same as a witch's curse. The devil is a spirit that possesses people. If the pastor says he is gone, the witch will find a living person to bear the blame.

Mary's got into a catastrophe, she'll be hanged even if she's six months pregnant, it's no use crying anymore, luckily for her there's a more suspicious woman in town .On Monday morning, a group of villagers in mud-splattered cloaks approached two Salem judges to formally file witchcraft charges, and within hours the village sheriff was armed with warrants and black sticks, A door was pried open, and Sarah Goode lived in the house a mile southwest of the vicarage.

On the morning of March 3, the sheriff took Sarah to the tavern of Ingersoll's house, where her interrogation would take place. If there is a center in the town, it is the Ingersoll tavern, which The chapel is just a few steps away, where the Parisian congregation rest between Sunday sermons.

The tavern was more crowded than usual that morning. Martha Corey decided not to go to the trial, and tried to persuade her husband not to, but she failed. Giles Corey didn't miss a minute of the trial. , the Ingersoll tavern could not accommodate any more villains, so the trial was moved to the chapel.

According to Puritan teachings, the theater was a place of shameful vanity, and there was not a single theater in all of North America at that time.The chapel, also a dimly lit room in its heyday, had not been repaired for many years, and now it is dark and bleak, almost unusable, but it does not affect the "program atmosphere" at all.The farmers were perfectly aware of their place on the black wooden benches, but it was not Paris at the pulpit table but Justices of the Peace Jonathan Corwin and John Hassan, who presided over the trial.

Sarah was quick to admit that she had tormented two of the Paris girls, Thomas Putnam's daughter and Griggs' maid, for the past two months.

The four girls began to contort violently at the sight of her. What could Sarah do, but Sarah also knew that Hassan had arrested two other women.

I have been alone.

Maybe Sarah thought so, so when Hassan asked for the fourth, fifth time who cast the spell on these children, Sarah Goode said Sarah Osborn's name.

The recovered girls clarified that they were tortured together by Goode and Osborne, who would grunt as they walked by the house, as if they were casting spells or communicating with the devil.

Hassan cross-examines a second suspect in court, middle-aged Sarah Osborne, who has been chasing an inheritance her husband left her while she begins a relationship with an Irish farm Workers dated, married soon after, and rumors circulated about her for years.

Compared with the weather-beaten Goode, who looks in her 70s, but is actually only 38 years old, Osborne is much more decent, even though she is paralyzed in bed.

"I haven't met Goode," Osborn said to Hassan. "I don't know her either. I don't want to involve her."

"But she's got you involved." Hassan prodded further.

In game theory, everyone knows that if everyone invites the most beautiful girl, the rest of the girl's companions will turn away in arrogance, leaving other unlucky people who were rejected by the most beautiful "goddess" They spend their "bachelor night" alone, so the best thing for everyone is that everyone invites the most beautiful girl friends, as the saying goes, a bird in the hand is worse than a bird in the woods.

However, in reality, everyone encounters more of a prisoner's dilemma. The confession will be released immediately because of meritorious service. She will even stand on the witness stand like Abigail Hopps. The worst is that both of them will go to jail for eight years. .

But if she is silent, she may be imprisoned alone for ten years.

Do you trust someone who is almost a stranger to you?

If not, how can you expect her to be as silent as you are?

Osborn told Hassan, "I don't know her, I don't know why she framed me."

Seeing that Osborn was not fooled, Hassan asked the girls to stand up and ask them to identify, and every girl positively identified Osborn.

After his arrest, Osborne was thrown in jail.

That night, the guards at the Salem prison heard Osborn's grunts.

At first the guard didn't hear it clearly, but later he heard it when he got closer. Osborn was saying, "It's better to say that I'm cursed than that I'm a witch."

The guard told Hassan about this, which aroused Hassan's suspicion. What did Osborn mean?

One, Sarah Goode cursed her.

Two, besides the two of them, there were other witches who were not caught.

So Hassan decided to continue the "trial" tomorrow, and he wanted to catch all the witches in Salem, so that the town could return to "peace".

(End of this chapter)