Among the papers in the case is the following:—­

“THE DEPOSITION OF RICHARD CARR, who testifieth and saith, that, about thirteen years ago, presently after some difference that happened to be between my honored father, Mr. George Carr, and Mrs. Bradbury, the prisoner at the bar, upon a sabbath at noon, as we were riding home, by the house of Captain Tho:  Bradbury, I saw Mrs. Bradbury go into her gate, turn the corner of, and immediately there darted out of her gate a blue boar, and darted at my father’s horse’s legs, which made him stumble; but I saw it no more.  And my father said, ‘Boys, what do you see?’ We both answered, ’A blue boar.’

“ZERUBABEL ENDICOTT testifieth and saith, that I lived at Mr. George Carr, now deceased, at the time above mentioned, and was present with Mr. George Carr and Mr. Richard Carr.  And I also saw a blue boar dart out of Mr. Bradbury’s gate to Mr. George Carr’s horse’s legs, which made him stumble after a strange manner.  And I also saw the blue boar dart from Mr. Carr’s horse’s legs in at Mrs. Bradbury’s window.  And Mr. Carr immediately said, ‘Boys, what did you see?’ And we both said, ‘A blue boar.’  Then said he, ‘From whence came it?’ And we said, ‘Out of Mr. Bradbury’s gate.’  Then said he, ’I am glad you see it as well as I.’ Jurat in Curia, Sept. 9, ’92.”

Stephen Sewall, the clerk of the courts, with his usual eagerness to make the most of the testimony against persons accused, adds to the deposition the following:—­

“And they both further say, on their oaths, that Mr. Carr discoursed with them, as they went home, about what had happened, and they all concluded that it was Mrs. Bradbury that so appeared as a blue boar.”

At the date of this occurrence, Richard Carr was twenty years of age, and Zerubabel Endicott a lad of of fifteen.

It is not to be wondered at that there was “some difference between” George Carr and Mrs. Bradbury, if he was in the habit of indulging in such talk about her as he took the leading part in on this occasion.  He evidently encouraged in his “boys” the absurd imaginations with which their credulity had been stimulated.  They were prepared by preconceived notions to witness something preternatural about the premises of Mrs. Bradbury; and, in their jaundiced vision, any animal, moving in and out of the gate, might naturally assume the likeness of a “blue boar.”  Such ideas circulating in the family, and among the apprentices of Carr, would soon be widely spread.  No doubt, Zerubabel, on his visits to his home, told wondrous stories about Mrs. Bradbury.  His brother Samuel, then a youth of eighteen, had his imagination filled with them; and some time after, on a voyage to “Barbadoes and Saltitudos,” in which severe storms and various disasters were experienced, attributed them all to Mrs. Bradbury; and, “in a bright moonshining night, sitting upon the windlass, to which he had been sent forward