Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886. 103
that it was " no godcl speech." The situation was in no way extraor-
dinary. A woman says an unnecessary thing, a man retorts with
feeling, and tilings get involved.
The men probably soon forgot the circumstance, but Mrs. Bedortha
did not ; she treasured the threat of Hugh Parsons. vShe thought of
it at her work ; she told of it when out among her neighl)ors ; and she
trembled with secret fear when she retired at night. " I shall remember
you when 3'ou little think on it ! " These were the words
that rang in her ears. One night, as she was retiring, she was star-
tled by three flashes of light. They appeared to come from the inside
of her red shag cotton " waistcoat," which she had just taken off and
was about to hang upon a peg. She quickly held up the garment
between her hands a second time, but there was no flash. A double
Indian mat was between her and the fire, so that no light could have
been cast from that. For several nights she held up the red waist-
coat, but no flash of light was seen.
A month later Mrs. Bedortha was delivered of a child. Before
her recovery she became afflicted in a strange, mysterious way. She
felt upon her left side sharp pains as though pierced by knives in
three different places. "Suddenly after," she said, "my thoughts
were that this evil might come upon me from the said threatening
speech of Hugh Parsons. 1 do not apprehend that I was sick in any
other part of my body, but in the said three places only, and by the
extremity of these prickings only." Those who are familiar with
Cotton Mather's elaborate accounts of how the little "gentleman in
black" was in the habit of pinching and pricking people, will at once
see the drift of such evidence. Her nurse was a Avidow, Mrs.
]Marshfield, who had once lived at Windsor, herself a character not
free from rumored connection with witchcraft. It is within the possi-
bilities that the widow at once went all through the neighborhood, and
while the good matrons were carding or spinning (for it was then win-
ter) described the prickings as well as the threatenings of Hugh Par-
sons. And it is not at all improbable that Mrs. Parsons (Mary Lewis)