after her first fright and resentment were over; but he kept on
talking very freely about her, and using some pretty hard language.
This affair, which perhaps is not without a parallel in the occasional
experiences of married life, was, with other things of an equally
trivial and irrelevant character, brought to bear fatally against her
at her trial on the charge of witchcraft, between seven and eight
years afterward.

I can find no evidence against the moral character of this woman. One
person, at least, who participated largely in getting up accusations
against her, acknowledged, in a death-bed repentance, the wrong she
had done. Mr. Hale, the minister of the Beverly congregation, states,
in a deposition, that a certain woman, "being in full communion in our
church, came to me to desire that Goodwife Bishop, her neighbor, wife
of Edward Bishop, Jr., might not be permitted to receive the Lord's
Supper in our church till she had given her satisfaction for some
offences that were against her; namely, because the said Bishop did
entertain people in her house at unseasonable hours in the night, to
keep drinking and playing at shovel-board, whereby discord did arise
in other families, and young people were in danger to be corrupted;
that she knew these things, and had once gone into the house, and,
finding some at shovel-board, had taken the pieces they played with
and thrown them into the fire, and had reproved the said Bishop for
promoting such disorders, but received no satisfaction from her about
it." According to Mr. Hale's statement, the night after this complaint
was brought to him, the woman was found to be distracted. "She
continuing some time distracted, we sought the Lord by fasting and
prayer." After a while, the woman recovered her senses, and, as Mr.
Hale says he understood, expressed a suspicion "that she had been
bewitched by Bishop's wife." He declares that he did not, at the time,