ed." This was the lowest depth of
degradation of which her crazed old brain could conceive, and was what she
meant in the morning when alluding to the manner of her death. The
executioner had to struggle mightily with her before he was able to
overmaster her, she smiting him on the cheek the while; but at last he
flung her "open-faced" on the ground, and threw some linen cloths over
her; but "her hands not being tyed when she was throwen over, she laboured
to recover hirselfe, and put in her head betwixt two of the steps of the
leather, and keiped that powster for a tyme, till she was put from itt."
It is curious to mark the little bit of sanity in all this mournful
lunacy, when the familiar things of life were spoken of. She had always
been a great spinner, and the fame now went abroad that the devil had
helped her in this. Asked if it was not so, she at the first denied
disdainfully; use only and industry, she said, had made her so deft at her
work, and the devil had done nothing for her; but afterwards she maundered
off into some nonsense about her yarn, and how her distaff was often found
full when she had left it empty; and how the weaver could never weave the
thread spun from this yarn, which, of course, was "devil's dust" of the
true kind. She was mad enough, the wretched being, and could not fail to
trip if stones were laid in her path. But her first instincts respecting
her every-day occupation were right, and are singularly illustrative of
some of the phenomena of madness, and of how intimately with one's life is
interwoven common sense, even in the fibres of a diseased brain. She said
further that she was persuaded "her mother was a witch, for the secretest
thing that either I myself or any of the family could do, when once a mark
appeared upon her brow, she could tell it them, though done at a great
distance! Being demanded what sort of a mark it was, she answered, 'I have
some such like mark myself when I please, on my forehead.' Whereupon she
offered to uncover her head for visible satisfaction; the minister
refusing to behold it, and forbidding any discovery, was earnestly
requested by some spectators to allow the freedom: he yielded. She put
back her head-dress, and, seeming to frown, there was an exact horse-shoe,
shaped for nails, in her wrinkles--terrible enough, I assure you, to the
stoutest beholder." Her further confessions were curious, involving, as
they did, a visit from a tall woman who had one ch