Then I was moved to speak the Word of life to him in God's dreadful power; which came so over him that he could not open his mouth. His face swelled, and was red like a turkey; his lips moved, and he mumbled something; but the people thought he would have fallen down. I stepped up to him, and he said he was never so in his life before: for the Lord's power stopped the evil power in him; so that he was almost choked. The man was ever after very loving to Friends, and not so full of airy words to us; though he was full of pride; but the Lord's power came over him, and the rest that were with him. Another time there came an officer of the army, a very malicious, bitter professor whom I had known in London. He was full of his airy talk also, and spoke slightingly of the Light of Christ, and against the Truth, and against the Spirit of God being in men, as it was in the apostles' days; till the power of God, that bound the evil in him, had almost choked him as it did Colonel Rouse: for he was so full of evil that he could not speak, but blubbered and stuttered. But from the time that the Lord's power struck him and came over him, he was ever after more loving to us. The assizes being over, and we settled in prison upon such a commitment that we were not likely to be soon released, we broke off from giving the jailer seven shillings a week apiece for our horses, and seven shillings a week for ourselves, and sent our horses into the country. Upon which he grew very wicked and devilish, and put us down into Doomsdale, a nasty, stinking place, where they used to put murderers after they were condemned.[87] [87] This description of Doomsdale is far from pleasant reading, but it is a true and faithful picture of a dungeon in the seventeenth century, and because of its historic importance it is left exactly as it was written. It is no wonder the Quakers became prison reformers. The place was so noisome that it was observed few that went in did ever come out again in health. There was no house of office in it; and the excrement of the prisoners that from time to time had been put there had not been carried out (as we were told) for many years. So that it was all like mire, and in some places to the tops of the shoes in water and urine; and he would not let us cleanse it, nor suffer us to have beds or straw to lie on.