Also there appeared to me my own sister Bayley and three of her children in winding-sheets, and told me that Goody Nurse had murdered them.”

There is in this deposition a passage which illustrates one of the doctrines held at the time on the subject of witchcraft.  Mrs. Ann Putnam “testifieth and saith, that, on the first day of June, 1692, the apparition of Rebecca Nurse did again fall upon me, and almost choke me; and she told me, that, now she was come out of prison, she had power to afflict me, and that now she would afflict me all this day long.”  The reference here is probably to the fact, that, on the 1st of June, she with many other prisoners was transferred from the jail in Boston to that in Salem; and that, “all that day long” being outside of prison walls, she had greater power to afflict than when chained in a cell.  This was undoubtedly the received opinion, and it is curiously illustrated in the foregoing passage.

The only breath of disparagement against the character of Goodwife Nurse that can be found in any of the papers is in the following deposition:—­

“THE DEPOSITION OF SARAH HOULTON, relict of Benjamin Houlton, deceased, who testifieth and saith, that, about this time three years, my dear and loving husband, Benjamin Houlton, deceased, was as well as ever I knew him in my life till one Saturday morning, that Rebecca Nurse, who now stands charged for witchcraft, came to our house, and fell a railing at him because our pigs got into her field.  Though our pigs were sufficiently yoked, and their fence was down in several places, yet all we could say to her could no ways pacify her; but she continued railing and scolding a great while together, calling to her son Benj.  Nurse to go and get a gun and kill our pigs, and let none of them go out of the field, though my poor husband gave her never a misbeholding word.  And, within a short time after this, my poor husband going out very early in the morning, as he was coming in again, he was taken with a strange fit in the entry; being struck blind and stricken down two or three times, so that, when he came to himself, he told me he thought he should never have come into the house any more.  And, all summer after, he continued in a languishing condition, being much pained at his stomach, and often struck blind:  but, about a fortnight before he died, he was taken with strange and violent fits, acting much like to our poor bewitched persons when we thought they would have died; and the doctor that was with him could not find what his distemper was.  And, the day before he died, he was very cheerly; but, about midnight, he was again most violently seized upon with violent fits, till the next night, about midnight, he departed this life by a cruel death.

     “Jurat in Curia.”