Judge Bride: And where now is this child?
Doll Bilby: It is not yet born.
Judge Bride: And to whom the honour of its paternity?
Doll Bilby: Who else would it be but the fiend who came to comfort me?
Judge Bride: Do not hang your head, young Bilby, for to conceive is natural to woman. Rather should you redden and look down if after such expenditure of infernal ardour you had proved sterile. Conception is the glory of woman.
He stood up and dismissed the hearing. Then Captain Buzzey in a great sweat of fear took the witch back to her cell, and all others went home. That night the Boston Judges lay at the Black Moon. The barmaid heard Judge Lollimour say to Judge Bride, as these two sat by the hearth and drank their sack-posset: ‘Sir, this hearing is done as quickly as ever you prophesied. We will be back to Boston on the third day. I warrant the finding is more than any expected. There is enough against the wench to hang her three times over—but that is yet for the magistrates of the Superior Court to decide. We, at least, shall hold her without bail or bond.’ Then he said in wonder, ‘To think that God has vouchsafed to our eyes the sight of a woman who has embraced a demon....’ The Judges whispered. The barmaid would not repeat what they said.
These learned men called for ink-horn, sand, and pens. By ten o’clock they had written thus:
Doll Bilby of Cowan Corners, (Essex County,) being this day brought before us upon suspicion of witchcraft and upon the specific charge of afflicting Labour and Sorrow Thumb, twin daughters of Deacon Ephraim Thumb, we heard the aforesaid, and seeing what we did see, together with hearing charges of the persons then present, we committed this same Doll Bilby (she denying the matter of fact, yet confessing herself a witch, also confessing having had carnal knowledge of a fiend, also to being at this time pregnant by him, also to being married to him by the ceremony of Max Pax Fax) unto their majesties’ jail at Salem, as per mittimus then given out in order to further examination.
| Adam Bride | Magistrates | |
| Ralph Lollimour |
By eleven they slept upon their beds.