The disagreement between her and her husband, touching the witchcraft prosecutions, brought him into a very uncomfortable predicament.  With his characteristic imprudence of speech, he had probably expressed himself strongly against her unbelief in the sufferings of the girls and her refusal to attend the exhibitions of their tortures, or the examination of persons accused.  He was, unquestionably, highly shocked and incensed at her open repudiation of the whole doctrine of witchcraft.  Although he had become, in his old age, a professor and a fervently religious man, perhaps he fell back, in his resentment of her course, into his life-long rough phrases, and said that she acted as though the Devil was in her.  He might have said that she prayed like a witch.  Being entirely carried away by the delusion, he had his own marvellous stories to tell about his cattle’s being bewitched, &c.  His talk, undoubtedly, came to the ears of the prosecutors; and they seem to have taken steps to induce him to come forward as a witness against her.  The following document is among the papers:—­

“The evidence of Giles Corey testifieth and saith, that last Saturday, in the evening, sitting by the fire, my wife asked me to go to bed.  I told her I would go to prayer; and, when I went to prayer, I could not utter my desires with any sense, nor open my mouth to speak.

     “My wife did perceive it, and came towards me, and said she
     was coming to me.

     “After this, in a little space, I did, according to my
     measure, attend the duty.

“Some time last week, I fetched an ox, well, out of the woods about noon:  and, he laying down in the yard, I went to raise him to yoke him; but he could not rise, but dragged his hinder parts, as if he had been hip-shot.  But after did rise.

“I had a cat sometimes last week strangely taken on the sudden, and did make me think she would have died presently.  My wife bid me knock her in the head, but I did not; and since, she is well.

“Another time, going to duties, I was interrupted for a space; but afterward I was helped according to my poor measure.  My wife hath been wont to sit up after I went to bed:  and I have perceived her to kneel down on the hearth, as if she were at prayer, but heard nothing.

     “At the examination of Sarah Good and others, my wife was
     willing

     “March 24, 1692.”

The foregoing document does not express the idea that he thought his wife was a witch.  He states what he observed, and what happened to him and to his cattle.  He evidently supposed they were bewitched, and that he was obstructed, in going to prayer, in a strange manner; but he does not, in terms, charge it upon her.  It gives an interesting insight of the innermost domestic life of the period, in a farmhouse, and exhibits striking touches of the character and ways of these