ear, but to see this pertinacious demon, for it came and stood at the
foot of his bed. "The exact shape and proportion of it he could not
discover; but he saw a great body, with two red and glaring eyes, which,
for some time, were fixed steadily on him, and at length disappeared."
Innumerable were the antics it played. Once it purred like a cat; beat the
children's legs black and blue; put a long spike into Mr. Mompesson's bed,
and a knife into his mother's; filled the porringers with ashes; hid a
Bible under the grate; and turned the money black in people's pockets.
"One night," said Mr. Mompesson, in a letter to Mr. Glanvil, "there were
seven or eight of these devils in the shape of men, who, as soon as a gun
was fired, would shuffle away into an arbour;" a circumstance which might
have convinced Mr. Mompesson of the mortal nature of his persecutors, if
he had not been of the number of those worse than blind, who shut their
eyes and refuse to see.

In the mean time the drummer, the supposed cause of all the mischief,
passed his time in Gloucester gaol, whither he had been committed as a
rogue and a vagabond. Being visited one day by some person from the
neighbourhood of Tedworth, he asked what was the news in Wiltshire, and
whether people did not talk a great deal about a drumming in a gentleman's
house there? The visitor replied that he heard of nothing else; upon which
the drummer observed, "I have done it; I have thus plagued him; and he
shall never be quiet until he hath made me satisfaction for taking away my
drum." No doubt the fellow, who seems to have been a gipsy, spoke the
truth, and that the gang of which he was a member knew more about the
noises at Mr. Mompesson's house than any body else. Upon these words,
however, he was brought to trial at Salisbury for witchcraft; and, being
found guilty, was sentenced to transportation; a sentence which, for its
leniency, excited no little wonder in that age, when such an accusation,
whether proved or not, generally insured the stake or the gibbet. Glanvil
says that the noises ceased immediately the drummer was sent beyond the
seas; but that, somehow or other, he managed to return from
transportation; "by raising storms and affrighting the seamen, it was
said;" when the disturbances were forthwith renewed, and continued at
intervals for several years. Certainly, if the confederates of this roving
gipsy were so pertinacious in tormenting poor weak Mr. Mompesson, their