in her fits. She was not only hysterical
like her sisters, but she had a Spirit, and this Spirit sounded in her
ears information of things to come: as, that the servants as well as the
five children should be bewitched--which they were, but did not become so
notorious as the little impostors of better blood; all recovering so soon
as they left the house for other situations, and nothing more being heard
of them. Things went on then in this manner, the children being
perpetually tormented with fits, and for ever crying out against old dame
Samuel, when, in February of the next year (1590), it was resolved to
bring her to the house that the children might "scratch" her, and so
relieve themselves somewhat. Whereupon she, her young daughter Agnes, and
one Cicely Burder--both of whom were accused of the same malpractices as
herself--were haled to Mr. Throckmorton's, there to undergo their
preliminary ordeal. Every care was taken to prevent the mother from
holding any communication with her daughter Agnes; but at the entry she
managed to lean over and whisper to her. Mr. Pickering, the children's
uncle, who had undertaken to conduct this Scratching, was ready to swear
that she said, "I charge thee do not confess anything;" but Mother Samuel
swore, in her turn, that she had only charged her to hasten home to get
her father his dinner; for that same father was a terrible old Turk, and
not likely to wait patiently for his dinner or aught else.

When the women went into the house the children were standing by the fire,
perfectly well; but the instant they saw Mother Samuel, they fell down in
their fits, leaping and springing about like fishes newly taken out of the
water, drawing their heads and heels backwards, and throwing out their
arms with great groans that were terrible and troublesome to those that
beheld them. They screamed and struggled to get at the old woman,
scratching at the bed-clothes, or the maids' aprons, or anything they
could touch, crying out, "O! that I had her! O! that I had her!" And when
Mr. Pickering forced Mother Samuel's hand within theirs, they scratched at
it with so much vehemence that one of them splintered her nails "with her
eager desire of revenge;" doing the same by Cicely Burder, who thus, we
are not told how or why, found herself in a dangerous and equivocal
position, but seems to have got well out of it in time. Or perhaps she
died between whiles, happily for herself.

For the next few months