A few other men, too, were about as sane as Mr. Gaule on this maddest of
all mad subjects. Mr. Clark, a minister--and the ministers were generally
the worst--had a marvellous allowance of common sense, remembering the
times. A certain parishioner of his cried out that she was grievously
beset by a neighbour who came in the spirit, that is, as an apparition, to
teaze and torment her. Mr. Clark, the minister, knew the accused woman,
and believed in her innocency; but it happened one day, by one of those
curious coincidences which, by-the-bye, are so often exaggerated into far
more significance than they deserve, that the suspected woman while
milking her cow was struck by it on the forehead, and naturally fell
a-bleeding. At that moment, or said to be at that moment, her "spectre"
appeared to the afflicted person, and she, pointing out the place where it
stood, desired some of those who were with her to strike at it. They did
so, and she said they fetched blood. Hereupon a posse of them went to the
supposed witch, and found her with her forehead bleeding, just as the
afflicted had said. There was no question now of doubt, and they rushed
off to Mr. Clark to tell them what they had seen, and demand that she be
put to the proof. Mr. Clark went to the woman and asked what had made her
forehead bleed? She told him, a blow from her cow's horn; "whereby he was
satisfy'd that it was a Design of Satan to render an innocent person
suspected." Another instance of the same kind of thing happened at
Cambridge. A man believed that a certain widow sent her imps, as cats, to
bewitch and torment him. One night as he lay in bed one of these imps came
within reach, and he struck it on the back: when it vanished away, as was
to be expected. The next day the man sent to inquire of his old enemy, and
found that she had a sore back; at which he rejoiced exceedingly, having
now in his hands the clew which would guide him to revenge and her to
justice and the scaffold. But Mr. Day, her surgeon, stopped his triumph
before it was ripe, and cut the clew before it had spun out; telling him
that the sore back was nothing but a boil, which had gathered, headed, and
healed, like any other boil, and that it could have had no connexion
whatever with the blow which he had so valiantly given the cat-imp when in
bed. So this bit of cruelty was put a stop to, and the poor old creature,
with a boil on her back, slept her last sleep unhastened by the hangman.
Another wretched being who had been kept without sleep or food for
twenty-four hours, pricked, tried, and tortured into a state of temporary
imbecility, at last confessed to her imp Nan; but a gentleman in the
neighbourhood, very indignant at the folly and barbarity of the whole
thing, rescued the poor victim, and made her eat some meat and go to
sleep. When she woke up she said she knew nothing of what she had
confessed, but that she had a pullet which she sometimes called Nan, and
which of a surety was no imp, but an honest little hen that had to lay
good eggs some day, and be eaten at table when her work was done.