“was taken with strange fits, jumping up, and knocking her head against the fence, and seemed blind and deaf, and would not eat, neither let her pigs suck, but foamed at the mouth; which Goody Henderson, hearing of, said she believed she was overlooked, and that they had their cattle ill in such a manner at the Eastward, when they lived there, and used to cure them by giving of them red ochre and milk, which we also gave the sow.  Quickly after eating of which, she grew better; and then, for the space of near two hours together, she, getting into the street, did set off, jumping and running between the house of said deponents and said Bishop’s, as if she were stark mad, and, after that, was well again:  and we did then apprehend or judge, and do still, that said Bishop had bewitched said sow.”

William Stacey testified, that, as he was “agoing to mill,” meeting Bishop in the street, some conversation passed between them, and that,—­

“being gone about six rods from her, the said Bishop, with a small load in his cart, suddenly the off-wheel slumped or sunk down into a hole upon plain ground; that this deponent was forced to get one to help him get the wheel out.  Afterwards, this deponent went back to look for said hole where his wheel sunk in, but could not find any hole.”

Stacey further deposed, that, on another occasion, he—­

“met the said Bishop by Isaac Stearns’s brick-kiln.  After he had passed by her, this deponent’s horse stood still with a small load going up the hill; so that, the horse striving to draw, all his gears and tackling flew in pieces, and the cart fell down.”

These mishaps and marvels occurred in Summer Street, near the foot of Chestnut Street, where the ground was then much lower than it is now.  Stacey was ascending the street, on his way through High Street to his father’s mill, at the South River.

Stacey concluded his testimony as follows:—­

     “This deponent hath met with several other of her pranks at
     several times, which would take up a great time to tell of.

“This deponent doth verily believe that the said Bridget Bishop was instrumental to his daughter Priscilla’s death.  About two years ago, the child was a likely, thriving child; and suddenly screeched out, and so continued, in an unusual manner, for about a fortnight, and so died in that lamentable manner.”

Many of the extraordinary “pranks,” charged upon Bridget Bishop, had their scene near to her dwelling-house.  John Louder, a servant of John Gedney, Sr., some years before, had a controversy with her about her fowls, “that used to come into our orchard or garden.”  He swore as follows:—­