countenance the idea, "hoping better of Goody Bishop." He says
further, that he "inquired of Margaret King, who kept at or near the
house," what she had observed concerning the woman who had been
distracted. "She told me that she was much given to reading and
searching the prophecies of Scripture." At length the woman appeared
to have entirely recovered, went to Goody Bishop, gave satisfaction
for what she had said and done against her, and they became friends
again. Mr. Hale goes on to say, "I was oft praying with and
counselling of her before her death." She earnestly desired that
"Edward Bishop might be sent for, that she might make friends with
him. I asked her if she had wronged Edward Bishop. She said, not that
she knew of, unless it were in taking his shovel-board pieces, when
people were at play with them, and throwing them into the fire; and,
if she did evil in it, she was very sorry for it, and desired he would
be friends with her, or forgive her. This was the very day before she
died." That night her distemper returned, and, in a paroxysm of
insanity, she destroyed herself.

It is evident, from his own account, that Mr. Hale did not then fall
in with, or countenance at all, any unfavorable impressions against
Bridget Bishop; and that the poor diseased woman, when entirely free
from her malady, repented bitterly of what she had done and said of
Goodman Bishop and his wife, and heartily desired their forgiveness.
So far as the facts stated by Mr. Hale of his own knowledge go, they
prove that Bridget Bishop was the victim of gross misrepresentation.
Five years afterwards, as we shall see, Mr. Hale gave a very different
version of the affair, and one which it is extremely difficult to
reconcile with his own former deliberate convictions at the time when
the circumstances occurred.