t _as a hay-cock_, and
_that during all that time he was in perfect sense, and prayed to
Almighty God not to suffer the devil to destroy him_; and that he was
suddenly set down in that quagmire.

The workmen found one shoe on one side of his master's house, and the
other on the other side, and in the morning espied his perriwig
hanging on the top of a tree; by which it appears he had been carried
a considerable height, and that what he told them was not a fiction.

"After this it was observed that that part of the young man's body
which had been on the mud in the quagmire was somewhat benummbed and
seemingly deader than the other, whereupon the following _Saturday_,
which was the day before _Low Sunday_, he was carried to _Crediton,
alias Kirton_, to be bleeded, which being done accordingly, and the
company having left him for some little space, at their return they
found him in one of his fits, with his _forehead_ much _bruised_, and
_swoln_ to a _great bigness_, none being able to guess how it
happened, until his recovery from that _fit_, when upon enquiry he
gave them this account of it: _that a bird had with great swiftness
and force flown in at the window with a stone in its beak, which it
had dashed against his forehead, which had occasioned the swelling
which they saw_.

"The people much wondering at the strangeness of the accident,
diligently sought the stone, and under the place where he sat they
found not such a stone as they expected but a weight of brass or
copper, which it seems the daemon had made use of on that occasion to
give the poor young man that hurt in his forehead.

"The persons present were at the trouble to break it to pieces, every
one taking a part and preserving it in memory of so strange an
accident. After this the spirit continued to molest the young man in
a very severe and rugged manner, often handling him with great
extremity, and whether it hath yet left its violences to him, or
whether the young man be yet alive, I can have no certain account."

I leave the reader to consider of the extraordinary strangeness of the
relation.

The reader, considering the exceeding strangeness of the relation,
will observe that we have now reached "great swingeing falsehoods,"
even if that opinion had not hitherto occurred to his mind. But if he
thinks that such stories are no longer told, and even sworn to on
Bible oath, he greatly deceives himself. In the chapter on "Haunted
Houses" he will