on end; and
when the women told their tale, he said "on his conscience he thought it
was Mother Peterson, for he had met her going towards the island a little
while before." When on his oath, under examination, this valiant baker
declared that he had never been afraid of any cat before in his life; and
to a further question answered, "No, he had never seen such a cat before,
and he hoped in God he should never see the like again." But what
connection old Joan Peterson was assumed to have with this mysterious
black cat remains a mystery to this day: it was none to the judge and
jury, who condemned her to be hanged with safe and tranquil minds.

THE GEOLOGICAL BEWITCHMENT.[138]

In April, 1652, Mary Ellins, aged nine years, daughter of Edward Ellins,
of Evesham in the county of Worcester, was playing in the fields with some
neighbours' children. They were gathering cowslips in a pretty innocent
way, in which it would have been well if they had been contented to
remain; but on passing by a ditch they saw crouching therein one Catherine
Huxley, an old woman of no very good repute, generally supposed to be a
witch of the worst kind, and quick at casting an evil eye when offended.
The children seeing her, took up stones to throw at her, calling her
"witch" and other opprobrious names; whereat old Catherine cursed them,
and especially Mary Ellins, who made herself conspicuous as the chief
tormentor. Her curses had the desired effect. Mary went home, bewitched,
and who but Catherine had done it? For ever from that day she had strange
and troublesome passages with stones, so that it seemed as if the child
had fed upon stones, and nothing but stones, of all kinds of geological
formation. Scores of people went to see them: they were handled, and
looked at, and reasoned about, and discussed, and yet so many as ever
might come away, more still remained behind, and the supply was never
failing. When Mary's extraordinary power of elaborating flint and granite
and boulder and pebble in her young body had become troublesome and
expensive, and the parents wanted to get rid of the whole concern, they
undertook the prosecution of old Catherine, and _on this evidence alone,
that she had cursed their daughter, and that their daughter had since
then had extraordinary discharges of stones_, the old woman was condemned
and executed--hung up as a public show at Worcester in the bonny summer
months of 1652. As soon as she was hanged Mary had in