This they found true enough; George Endicott was crouching over a hastily lit fire and bemoaning his sins, and in little while without further speech he died. Mrs. Endicott was taken to her sister’s home on the way, it being then dawn, and they met Gilbert Farry, and told him Mr. Endicott was sudden dead. “It is no more than I looked for,” said he; whereupon Mrs. Endicott shocked those with her in the cart by laughing, and his remark and her manner of taking it were remembered afterwards. The end of this business was that the doctors made discovery that George Endicott had been poisoned by a drug given him in his ale; and a drug of this nature had been bought by Mrs. Endicott in Bedford a few hours after John Bunyan had spoken to her; this, together with the circumstances of her late dispute with her father, her being alone with him in the house, the suddenness of his illness and some broken words he had let drop in his last moments, was evidence enough, and Mrs. Endicott was arrested on the awful charge of murdering her father and lodged in Bedford Gaol, to the great scandal and confusion of all Nonconformists and damage to the cause of John Bunyan. The trial is within the memory of all, and no account of it is here required. Mrs. Endicott defended herself with prudence and spirit and strove to cast the guilt on the man Farry, who was the principal witness against her; and, indeed, his known spite towards her, the fact that Mr. Endicott’s will was in his favour and the misty kind of character he bore gave her some handle, but since she could no wise explain the drug she had bought save lamely saying it was for cleaning tiles and that she knew not its deadly properties, the case looked ill against the woman. Nevertheless, her youth, her comeliness, her known piety and long sweet behaviour, the influence of her relatives and the feeling of the people pleaded for her, and there was no one who doubted that she would be acquitted when on the last day of her trial she startled the court by rising up and declaring herself guilty and a helpmate of the Devil from the moment she abjured John Bunyan in her father’s barn. In fine she vowed herself a witch, and baring her arm showed them a purple hoof-print on the flesh that was known for the particular mark and sign of Hell. After this she refused to speak again either to her relatives or to the clergyman, and came forth to be hanged next day in a green tabinet gown with red ribbons. Not a word spoke she while being led through Bedford town, but was composed and seemed in a meditation. With her own hands she tied down her skirts and put up her hair, and so without a prayer or any plea for mercy was hanged in full sight of all Bedford.