ers of
the mother, she had suckled the child. The child had that same night
been attacked by fits, and a witch doctor of Yarmouth, who was
consulted, had prescribed for it. The reader will note that this
"suspicious circumstance" happened seven years earlier, and a large part
of the evidence presented in court concerned what had occurred from five
to seven years before.

We can not go into the details of a trial which abounded in curious bits
of evidence. The main plot indeed was an old one. The accused woman,
after she had been discharged from employment and reproved, had been
heard to mutter threats, close upon which the children of those she
cursed, who were now the witnesses against her, had fallen ill. Two of
the children had suffered severely and were still afflicted. They had
thrown up pins and even a two-penny nail. The nail, which was duly
offered as an exhibit in court, had been brought to one of the children
by a bee and had been forced into the child's mouth, upon which she
expelled it. This narrative was on a level with the other, that flies
brought crooked pins to the child. Both flies and bee, it will be
understood, were the witches in other form. A similar sort of evidence
was that a toad, which had been found as the result of the witch
doctor's directions, had been thrown into the fire, upon which a sharp
crackling noise ensued. When this incident was testified to in the court
the judge interrupted to ask if after the explosion the substance of the
toad was not to be seen in the fire. He was answered in the negative. On
the next day Amy Duny was found to have her face and body all scorched.
She said to the witness that "she might thank her for it." There can be
no doubt in the world that this testimony of the coincident burning of
the woman and the toad was regarded as damning proof, nor is there any
reason to believe that the court deemed it necessary to go behind the
mere say-so of a single witness for the fact. Along with this sort of
unsubstantial testimony there was presented a monotonous mass of
spectral evidence. Apparitions of the witches were the constant
occasions for the paroxysms of the children. In another connection it
will be observed that this form of proof was becoming increasingly
common in the last part of the seventeenth century. It can hardly be
doubted that in one way or another the use of such evidence at Bury
influenced other trials and more particularly the Salem cases in the Ne