'I have nothing to do with your torment,' said the old lady.
'Then it is Satan that does it, by your means,' said the girl.
'I have nothing to do with Satan, and know not what your torments are,' was the reply.
'That is the way Satan blinds you. When you are gone, I have no suffering.'
'You have greatly wronged me,' replied the lady; 'and on this account I have no doubt my presence is painful to you. I hope God will forgive you, and restore that reason, which in his inscrutable wisdom he has taken away.'
The old lady was now removed from the room, when the afflicted person relapsed into a state of quiet, which was of course attributed to the absence of the exciting cause.
'This is a juggler's game, Mr. Ellerson,' said Walter; 'that person accused is no more a witch than I am. If it be not an intended cheat, it is a diseased mind, or a nervous irritability, which has been trained into a system, and acts with some regularity. These people are some of them knaves, and most of the remainder are fools; the reputed witch is the only one in her right mind.'
'I cannot decide so readily as you. There is some evidence in the Scriptures of the reality of visible, Satanic influence, but I am inclined to believe there has been little, if any of it, since the Christian era; but how that female preserves her stationary posture in the air, with no visible support, I cannot imagine. If you, Walter, are wise on this point, I wish you would enlighten me.'
'There is some mystery in it,' said Strale, 'but so there is in every thing. To believe such follies we must renounce common sense, and I had almost said a belief in a beneficent Providence. I have seen persons poised on the fingers of others, in such a manner as to be apparently unaffected by gravitation; the cause, no one explains; but if such cases are scrutinized, it will doubtless be found they are perfectly consistent with natural laws. Think you, Mr. Ellerson, it is possible that the devil has such power on earth?'