Bernard Peach testified, that once being in bed on a Sabbath night, the widow Martin came into his room through the window, and seizing him, drew up his body into a heap and she then lay upon him about two hours, but at last after a severe struggle he got two of her fingers between his teeth and bit them until she cried out with the pain and vanished. At another time when she was after him he struck her or her spectre with his quarter-staff and it was reported that she was wounded on the head. So it was sworn that she once travelled from Amesbury to Newbury on a rainy day without wetting even the soles of her feet, and boasted that she scorned to be drabbed. It was concluded in court that the devil helped her on. 82 But the most wonderful story told on this occasion was that of Joseph Ring; the man seems to have been a good fiddler, whom the old charter witches and demons selected for their peculiar use and amusement. He testified that for two years past he had been strangely carried about through the air to witch revels and dances; that for a long time they had kept him dumb, but since they began to be prosecuted he had in a measure recovered his speech. His knowledge of them and their power over him, began thus: As he sat in his house one day, a stranger of suspicious mien applied to him to give music to a company of dancers on a certain evening; and whilst the timid and distrustful fiddler hesitated, the proffer of a large sum of money by the stranger, and which he too readily accepted, induced him to make the desired promise and immediately the man vanished so suddenly that Ring was exceedingly startled and repented of what he had done; but it was too late. At the appointed hour he found a horse, well caparisoned, standing at his door; he took the hint, but no sooner had he mounted into the saddle, than the animal leaped into the air and pushed forward with a velocity which deprived him of all consciousness of time or distance and almost of existence itself. He next found himself in front of a splendid building, with lights from every part streaming out upon night’s darkness, but from whence issued no sound of mirth or festivity. Presently Goodman Ring was introduced into a spacious hall, he screwed up his fiddle, began to play, and then the dancing began in good earnest. At once a preternatural influence came over him, and he was amazed at the power of his own instrument, which seemed to fill that ample hall to its very roof, and to inspire dancing which he now plainly saw was superhuman. It was here that he saw the widow Martin, the prisoner at the bar, swinging and dancing among the revellers, like a nimble maiden of eighteen; and he was willing to swear to her identity.