But now “the magistrates, long annoyed by the presence of an obstinate Papist in Boston, ordered Goody Glover to be taken into custody.” A search was made of her house, “and certain images were found in secret.” It is not difficult to conjecture what they were. Beads or medals, maybe; certainly a cross or crucifix was one of them. She was “loaded with chains” and placed in a prison. As no provision was made to feed prisoners in Massachusetts at that time, her condition must have been one of great distress. It is said that the Calefs continued to succor her, and there is a statement that a Dame Nourse of Salem, visiting Boston, gave her some aid. Can this be the explanation of Mather’s inexorable pursuit of Rebecca Nourse? To relieve the tedium of an existence deprived of innocent amusements, the Goodwin children renewed their deceptions, and Cotton Mather, “to relieve the distress of the afflicted John Goodwin, took Martha to his house to live.” Now it was that the cunning mischief-maker befooled Cotton Mather to the top of his bent. Page after page of the ponderous _Magnalia_ is occupied with a grave recital of the pranks played by this child in the minister’s house. “She screamed with pain, and cried that Glover’s chains were about her leg.... To prevent the escape of the prisoner’s spirit, to afflict the child, they put other chains on Glover.... They chained the Papist till she could not move and she did spew blood.” Martha would not allow the spirit to be confined. She said Goody Glover brought her a horse to ride, and her pastor tells us “she would make all the motions of a person who rides, about the room and up the stairs, like one astraddle of a horse.” Imagine the impish glee of the child at seeing the most important person in the Colony following her about in her horseplay, with looks of awe! Her terrible precocity taught her to play on his hatred of Mrs. Glover’s creed. “While possessed of the devil and Mrs. Glover,” he says, “she could read Popish books, but not books against Popery.” In the pastor’s study “she would become calm, and no longer afflicted. This was witnessed by divers persons, and many times.” When asked why she was not afflicted in the pastor’s study, the child replied, with a thorough reading of Mather’s greatest weakness—his vanity, “Your study is too holy a place for the devil or Glover to enter.”