off with them to their rendezvous. On such occasions she
made a spring upwards, as if to mount her horse, and then, still seated
on her chair, mimicked with dexterity and agility the motions of the
animal pacing, trotting, and galloping, like a child on the nurse's
knee; but when she cantered in this manner upstairs, she affected
inability to enter the clergyman's study, and when she was pulled into
it by force, used to become quite well, and stand up as a rational
being. "Reasons were given for this," says the simple minister, "that
seem more kind than true." Shortly after this, she appears to have
treated the poor divine with a species of sweetness and attention, which
gave him greater embarrassment than her former violence. She used to
break in upon him at his studies to importune him to come downstairs,
and thus advantaged doubtless the kingdom of Satan by the interruption
of his pursuits. At length the Goodwins were, or appeared to be, cured.
But the example had been given and caught, and the blood of poor Dame
Glover, which had been the introduction to this tale of a hobby-horse,
was to be the forerunner of new atrocities and fearfully more general
follies.

This scene opened by the illness of two girls, a daughter and niece of
Mr. Parvis, the minister of Salem, who fell under an affliction similar
to that of the Goodwins. Their mouths were stopped, their throats
choked, their limbs racked, thorns were stuck into their flesh, and pins
were ejected from their stomachs. An Indian and his wife, servants of
the family, endeavouring, by some spell of their own, to discover by
whom the fatal charm had been imposed on their master's children, drew
themselves under suspicion, and were hanged. The judges and juries
persevered, encouraged by the discovery of these poor Indians' guilt,
and hoping they might thus expel from the colony the authors of such
practices. They acted, says Mather, the historian, under a conscientious
wish to do justly; but the cases of witchcraft and possession increased
as if they were transmitted by contagion, and the same sort of spectral
evidence being received which had occasioned the condemnation of the
Indian woman Titu, became generally fatal. The afflicted persons failed
not to see the spectres, as they were termed, of the persons by whom
they were tormented. Against this species of evidence no _alibi_ could
be offered, because it was admitted, as we have said elsewhere, that the
real person