The eldest of three sisters began the game, and found
herself before long obliged to take the next in age into her confidence.
By and by the youngest, finding her sisters pitied and caressed on
account of their supposed sufferings while she was neglected, began to
play off the same tricks. The usual phenomena followed. They were
convulsed, they fell into swoons, they were pinched and bruised, they
were found in the water, on the top of a tree or of the barn. To these
places they said they were conveyed through the air, and there were those
who had seen them flying, which shows how strong is the impulse which
prompts men to conspire with their own delusion, where the marvellous is
concerned. The girls did whatever they had heard or read that was common
in such cases. They even accused a respectable neighbor as the cause of
their torments. There were some doubters, but "so far as I can learn,"
says Turell, "the greater number believed and said they were under the
evil hand, or possessed by Satan." But the most interesting fact of all
is supplied by the confession of the elder sister, made eight years later
under stress of remorse. Having once begun, they found returning more
tedious than going o'er. To keep up their cheat made life a burden to
them, but they could not stop.
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