Nine years after, the same personage appeared and carried her with others, upon a pole through the air to Five-mile-pond, and there making her renounce her former baptism, baptized her, amen, since which she afflicted people, and frolicked with the devil upon Sabbath days, and other holy festivals. Hathorn, before whom this was also taken, always ready to hunt witches, no sooner heard that Mrs. Osgood and the devil had company upon the pole; than he asked her who they were. She replied they were Goody Tyler, Mistress Baker, and Dea, Fry’s wife. These were then arrested, and constrained to make further witch fictions to save their lives. And thus was the business driven on. There were sceptics even at this season of the delusion, who denied the validity of spectral evidence. It appears, said they, that the devil can use the spectre of one person to afflict another; why may he not take the spectre of an innocent person in that business, and then as things now are, every man’s life is at the mercy of the devil; for between him and the afflicted he is sure to suffer. Hathorn on this occasion asked Mrs. Osgood whether the devil, or his witches could use the shape of an innocent person to afflict people.—She replied that it could not be; for said she, last Monday night we witches had a meeting to afflict people, and Goody Dean and myself tried to carry the shape of the Rev. Mr. Dean of Andover between us to make it believed that he afflicted persons; but we could not. And why could you not do it, said the justice. Because, said Mrs. O., the Lord would not suffer so good a man, to be so used! This answer saved the worthy minister, who had often been hinted at by the bewitched. He was not a sound convert to witchcraft. But on the 14th of May 1692, Sir William Phipps arrived79 with the Provincial Charter, and immediately took upon himself the government. On the second day of June five magistrates sat, and selected for trial Bridget Bishop, the wife of Edward Bishop of Salem. This poor woman had for many years been reputed a witch; and this by the accusations of one Samuel Gray, and although on his death-bed he confessed his sorrow for the wrong he had done her, yet the imputation still rested upon her, and now enabled the afflicted, with their managers, to destroy her. And above all, as an excrescence supposed to be a witch teat was found on her body. To give currency and popularity to her execution a story was fabricated, and most industriously circulated by the witchcraft party, that as Bishop was led out to execution under a strong guard, she gave a look at the then newly erected meeting house in Salem, so blasting and spiteful, that an invisible demon forthwith entered in and tore down a portion of the holy edifice. And this is from Cotton Mather’s account of the Salem witch trials, drawn up for inspection, and by the request of Sir William, himself. The commissioners then adjourned to the 30th of June following.