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
thereunto."

"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
belate