Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/20

10 was on a Monday. From that day until the next Thursday Joan Baddaford made no fire in her house, whether from fear or from poverty we cannot tell. On Thursday, however, Joan began to build a fire. She laid a few coals in her chimney—brought from a neighbor's cottage, no doubt—and turned aside to break up some wood. Her child was sitting upon the hearth. Suddenly she heard the child scream, and saw that the band about his neck was burning. Looking into his neck, she found that the flesh was "burned to the bone". Yet the child had not fallen into the fire, but was "sitting on the hearth as before". Indeed, the fire was not kindled at all, but the coals lay there just as she had put them in. These facts Joan "presently shewed to divers of the chief of Dartmouth, and sought the best remedy she could, but found neither salve nor anything else that did it any good, but within three weeks after the child consumed and died". Here again is a grim fact—superstition or no superstition—the child perished miserably, and no one could understand his disease.

The examination of William Tompson, of Dartmouth, is uncommonly lively and picturesque. William was a sailor. Some six years before he and a comrade (one William Furseman, also of Dartmouth) had chanced to meet Alice Trevisard upon the Force in that town. It was about midnight. She was dressed in a "long grayish cape down to her foot", and wore a hood which covered almost all her face, "so that they took her for some Seminary priest". They asked her what she was doing in the street at that time of night. Probably the sailors were not quite sober. At any rate, they were uncivil, and if, as William alleged, they mistook Alice for a priest, we may be sure they were rough-handed. An altercation followed—but we will let Tompson tell his own story:

Vengeance was swift. Within three weeks after the damnum minatum, William Tompson went to sea. His ship caught fire—none knew how—and foundered. Out of twenty-five on board, only six were saved. As for William, he was picked up by a Portuguese vessel ("by a Portingalle") and carried to Spain, where he was imprisoned for a whole year. On his return Alice Trevisard said to Elizabeth Tompson, his wife, "Is he come home on life? He hath better luck than a good man! But it is no matter. He shall