While Andros was still governor, shortly after Increase Mather's departure for England, four young children, members of a pious family in Boston, the eldest a girl of thirteen, the youngest a boy not five, had begun to behave in a singular manner, barking like dogs, purring like cats, seeming to become deaf, blind, or dumb, having their limbs strangely distorted, complaining that they were pinched, pricked, pulled, or cut--acting out, in fact, the effects of witchcraft, according to the current notions of it and the descriptions in the books above referred to. The terrified father called in Dr. Oakes, a zealous leader of the ultra-theocratic party--presently sent to England as joint agent with Mather--who gave his opinion that the children were bewitched. The oldest girl had lately received a bitter scolding from an old Irish indented servant, whose daughter she had accused of theft. This same old woman, from indications no doubt given by the children, was soon fixed upon as being the witch. The four ministers of Boston and another from Charlestown having kept a day of fasting and prayer at the troubled house, the youngest child was relieved. But the others, more persevering and more artful, continuing as before, the old woman was presently arrested and charged with bewitching them. She had for a long time been reputed a witch, and she even seems to have flattered herself that she was one. Indeed, her answers were so "senseless" that the magistrates referred it to the doctors to say if she were not "crazed in her intellects." On their report of her sanity, the old woman was tried, found guilty, and executed. Though Increase Mather was absent on this interesting occasion, he had a zealous representative in his son, Cotton Mather, by the mother's side grandson of the "Great Cotton," a young minister of twenty-five, a prodigy of learning, eloquence, and piety, recently settled as colleague with his father over Boston North Church. Cotton Mather had an extraordinary memory, stuffed with all sorts of learning. His application was equal to that of a German professor. His lively imagination, trained in the school of Puritan theology, and nourished on the traditionary legends of New England, of which he was a voracious and indiscriminate collector, was still further stimulated by fasts, vigils, prayers, and meditations almost equal to those of any Catholic saint. Of a temperament ambitious and active, he was inflamed with a great desire of "doing good." Fully conscious of all his gifts, and not a little vain of them, like the Jesuit missionaries in Canada, his contemporaries, he believed himself to be often, during his devotional exercises, in direct and personal communication with the Deity.