also came in.  Willard, perhaps, did not feel very agreeably towards his grandfather, at the time, for having shown an unwillingness to pray with him.  The old man either saw, or imagined he saw, a very unpleasant expression in Willard’s countenance.  “To my apprehension, he looked after such a sort upon me as I never before discerned in any.”  The long and hard travel, the fatigues and excitements of election-week, were too much for the old man, tough and rugged as he was; and a severe attack of a complaint, to which persons of his age are often subject, came on.  He experienced great sufferings, and, as he expressed it, “was like a man on a rack.”

“I told my wife immediately that I was afraid that Willard had done me wrong; my pain continuing, and finding no relief, my jealousy continued.  Mr. Lawson and others there were all amazed, and knew not what to do for me.  There was a woman accounted skilful came hoping to help me, and after she had used means, she asked me whether none of those evil persons had done me damage.  I said, I could not say they had, but I was sore afraid they had.  She answered, she did fear so too....  As near as I remember.  I lay in this case three or four days at Boston, and afterward, with the jeopardy of my life (as I thought), I came home.”

On his return, he found his grandson, the same Daniel who had warned Henry Wilkins against going to Boston with John Willard, on his death-bed, in great suffering.  Another attack of his own malady came on.  There was great consternation in the neighborhood, and throughout the village.  The Devil and his confederates, it was thought, were making an awful onslaught upon the people at Will’s Hill.  Parris and others rushed to the scene.  Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcot were carried up to tell who it was that was bewitching old Bray, and young Daniel, and others of the Wilkinses who had caught the contagion, and were experiencing or imagining all sorts of bodily ails.  They were taken to the room where Daniel was approaching his death-agonies; and they both affirmed, that they saw the spectres of old Mrs. Buckley and John Willard “upon his throat and upon his breast, and pressed him and choked him;” and the cruel operation, they insisted upon it, continued until the boy died.  The girls were carried to the bedroom of the old man, who was in great suffering; and, when they entered, the question was put by the anxious and excited friends in the chamber to Mercy Lewis, whether she saw any thing.  She said, “Yes:  they are looking for John Willard.”  Presently she pretended to have caught sight of his apparition, and exclaimed, “There he is upon his grandfather’s belly.”  This was thought wonderful indeed; for, as the old man says in a deposition he drew up afterwards, “At that time I was in grievous pain in the small of my belly.”

Mrs. Ann Putnam had her story to tell about John Willard.  Its substance is seen in a deposition drawn up about the time, and is in the same vein as her testimony in other cases; presenting a problem to be solved by those who can draw the line between semi-insane hallucination and downright fabrication.  Her deposition is as follows:—­