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and while they listened to the raging storm without, conversed on the mysteries of that invisible. world, which has always formed an interesting theme for the children of Adam.

"Charles Stevens, only a few years ago, you harbored at your house a wizard," said Louder. Charles Stevens was half amused and half indigHe began to expostulate with Louder, when

nant.

the latter said:

"Nay, nay; I charge you not with bartering with the devil; but list to me. On the self-same day you found the stranger wounded at the roadside near the spring, we three had been hunting among the hills for deer. Some one had bewitched

my gun. I know it, for when I fired, the bullet, which never failed on other occasions to go straight to the mark, went astray. All day long that mysterious stranger had followed us, grievously tormenting us and leading astray our shots, until I loaded my piece with a sixpence and fired at a large fat buck which strutted temptingly before me. Had you probed his wound I trow you would have found my sixpence buried in his side."

At this, the negro, who was crouched in a corner, groaned in agony, while Charles was inclined to treat the matter lightly. Louder related how, while at the lake in the wood, he had been visited by this msyterious apparition, who offered him a book

to sign, adding that he knew at once that his tormentor was a wizard or the Devil, that his eyes were in an instant changed to fire, and sulphurous smoke issued from his nostrils.

"Can you ask me if I believe my own eyes and my own ears?" concluded Louder. "Those are truths, and had I signed his book, I would have been tormented by fiends and my soul forever lost." "They do say the people are ready to cry out on Goody Nurse," put in Bly.

"Goody Nurse! surely not," answered Charles. "She is one of the best women I know. She is kind, good and gentle with all.”

66 "Verily, so is Satan, until he has his clutches upon you. Goody Nurse is a witch."

"Beware, John Louder, how you malign such as she," said Charles, growing serious. "Have the proof before you assert.'

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"I know whereof I speak," declared John Louder. "About five or six months ago, one morning about sunrise, I was in my chamber assaulted by the shape of Goody Nurse, which looked on me, grinned at me, and very much hurt me with a blow on the side of my head. That selfsame day, about noon, the same shape walked in the room where I was, and an apple strangely flew out of my hand, into the lap of my wife, six or eight feet from me. Can you deny such evidences as this?"

"I have seen her," put in John Bly, "and once when her shape did assail me, I struck at her with my cane, and she cried out that I had torn her coat."

Samuel Gray stated that he had been tormented with spectres and spirits. All this was agony to the horrified negro, who, crouching in one corner, shivered with dread, while his eyes wildly rolled in agony.

"Once a shape appeared to me and did tempt me to sign a book which I refused to do, and the shape whipped me with iron rods to compel me there

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"Did you know the witch?" asked Charles. "Verily, I did."

"Who was it?"

"One Bridget Bishop. I afterward saw her at a general meeting of witches in a field, where they all partook of a diabolical sacrament, not of bread and wine, but of the flesh and blood of murdered people."

At this the negro groaned and crouched closer to the chimney jamb. The storm roared without, and the rain fell with a steady pouring sound, as the superstitious hunters filled their pipes and gathered closer about the fire.

"There is no need to deny longer that witches exist," said John Louder. "I have seen enough

of them to convince me beyond question that there are witches. Ann Durent one day left her infant, William Durent with Amy Dunny, a woman who has since been known to be a witch. Though Dunny was an old woman, she afterward confessed she had given suck to the child, whereat Durent was displeased and Dunny went away with discontent and menaces.

"The night after, the child fell into strange and sad fits, wherein it continued for divers weeks. One doctor Jacob, who knew something of witches, advised her to hang up the child's blanket in the chimney corner all day, and at night, when she went to put the child into it, if she found anything in it, then to throw it without fear into the fire. Accordingly at night when she took down the blanket, there fell out of it a great toad, which hopped up and down the hearth, uttering strange cries. A boy caught it, and held it in the fire with the tongs, where it made a horrible noise, and flashed like gunpowder, with a report like that of a pistol. Whereupon the toad was seen no more. The next day a kinswoman of Dunny said she was grievously scorched with the fire, and on going to the house it was found to be even so. After the burning of the toad, the child recovered."

"I did not believe in witchcraft at first," remarked Samuel Gray, by way of preface to some

weird account of his own; "but I cannot doubt my senses. I had been to Boston on business for the parson and, being belated, was riding along the road homeward. I had just reached the old Plaistowe field, when I suddenly discovered a long black something, like a monster cat or panther, running along the fence at my side. I was seized of some strange power and despite my will was forced to wink my eyes. If I closed my eyes but for a second, the black object was back at the point where it started from and ran along again, until I closed my eyes, when it appeared where I had first seen it. My horse became affrighted and ran away with me."

John Bly knocked the ashes from his pipe and began:

"I have an uncle in Virginia, who was sorely tried by witches. One witch in the neighborhood, especially, did grievously torment him. He would go to his door and see his field full of cattle; but on entering the field itself, no cattle were to be seen. Knowing full well that he was bewitched, he loaded his gun with a silver bullet, and one day fired at a large white cow. Instantly every beast disappeared, and he saw an old woman over the hill limping as if in pain. It was the suspected witch, whom he had shot in the leg. She did not bother him any more; but another witch used

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