this Newbury trouble was something very like it. Hereupon the good
woman took the matter up, saying she had been over to Newbury, and had
seen with her own eyes, and heard with her own ears; and that she could
say of it as the Queen of Sheba did of Solomon's glory, "The half had
not been told her." She then went on to tell me of many marvellous and
truly unaccountable things, so that I must needs think there is an
invisible hand at work there.

We reached Hampton about one hour before noon; and riding up the road
towards the meeting-house, to my great joy, Uncle Rawson, who had
business with the Commissioners then sitting, came out to meet me,
bidding me go on to Mr. Weare's house, whither he would follow me when
the Court did adjourn. He came thither accordingly, to sup and lodge,
bringing with him Mr. Pike the elder, one of the magistrates, a grave,
venerable man, the father of mine old acquaintance, Robert. Went in the
evening with Mistress Weare and her maiden sister to see a young girl in
the neighborhood, said to be possessed, or bewitched; but for mine own
part I did see nothing in her behavior beyond that of a vicious and
spoiled child, delighting in mischief. Her grandmother, with whom she
lives, lays the blame on an ill-disposed woman, named Susy Martin,
living in Salisbury. Mr. Pike, who dwells near this Martin, saith she
is no witch, although an arrant scold, as was her mother before her; and
as for the girl, he saith that a birch twig, smartly laid on, would cure
her sooner than the hanging of all the old women in the Colony.
Mistress Weare says this is not the first time the Evil Spirit hath been
at work in Hampton; for they did all remember the case of Goody
Marston's child, who was, from as fair and promising an infant as one
would wish to see, changed into the likeness of an ape, to the great
grief and sore shame of its parents; and, moreover, that when the child
died, there was seen by more than one person a little old woman in a