If there had been a crowd like that when London brought together its thousands at Tyburn, it would have seemed less appalling.

But here were a few people--not alienated from each other by ancestral differences in creed or politics, and who had never seen each other's faces before--but members of the same little band which had fled together from their old home, holding the same political views, the same religious faith; who had sat on the same benches at church, eaten at the same table of the Lord's supper, near neighbors on their farms, or in the town and village streets; now hunting each other down like wolves, and hanging each other up in cold blood! This it was that set apart the Salem persecution from all other persecutions of those old days against witches and heretics; and which has given it a painful pre-eminence in horror.

It was neighbor hanging neighbor; and brother and sister persecuting to death with the foulest lies and juggling tricks their spiritual brothers and sisters.

And the plea of "delusion" will not excuse it, except to those who have not investigated its studied cruelty and malice.

Sheer, unadulterated wickedness had its full share in the persecution; and that wickedness can only be partly extenuated by the plea of possible insanity or of demoniacal possession.
[Illustration: Marched from jail for the last time] The route to the gallows hill was a rough and difficult one; but the condemned were marched from the jail for the last time, one by one, and compelled to walk attended by a small guard and a rude and jeering company.