hese laws yet still not be saved. Puritan preachers never tired of railing against the "meritmongers," those who thought they could buy their way into heaven with good works. On the other hand, it was easy to prove that you were damned--all you had to do was break the law. So there was tremendous pressure on everyone at least to appear to be one of the elect.All of this is complicated, even to an adult. But put yourself in the place of a nine-year-old girl named Betty Parris. All you know is that the winter has been long and boring, that the grownups are more cranky than usual so they punish you more often, and that you must have sinned with your teeth because one of them aches. If all this isn't enough, you have to be better than the other children in Salem Village, because your father is the minister. For weeks now your older cousin Abigail Williams has been making you sit with her and listen to your father's slave Tituba tell shocking stories of her former life as a heathen in the Barbados. It was bad enough with just the two of you, but Abby never could keep a secret, and now there are ten or twelve of her friends who turn up at the back door as soon as your father walks out the front, begging Tituba for more. At first it was exciting, in a scary sort of way, but lately Tituba's taken to acting out her heathen rituals, showing how they used to conjure spirits to foretell the future. You know you're damned if you keep this up, but Abby's slammed the door on your only way out: she'll kill you if you tell. Your soul is suffocating in sin, and you can't sleep any more for fear of the nightmares that always come.The pressure was enough to give anyone a nervous breakdown. Betty Parris "freaked out." Abigail Williams, for all her daring, wasn't immune, and soon she began trying to fly and bursting into howls whenever her uncle prayed aloud or read the Scriptures, just like her cousin Betty. Then Betty, in one of her fits, let slip the name...
