A WITCH IN TIME
BY HERB WILLIAMS
If historians have ever pondered that eerie
and magical transformation of Abigaile Goodyeare,
that "faire young maide" who aged so before the
disbelieving eyes of gallows witnesses, mayhaps
herein lies the answer....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I saw this faire young maide, Abigaile Goodyeare, standing yonder on ye gallows and shee saith againe and againe that she was no witch, although the jury had founde her guilty of ... familiarity with Satan, the grand enemie of God & man; and that by his instigation and help ... afflicted and done harm to the bodyes and estates of sundry of his Majesties subjects....
—WITCHCRAFT IN EARLY AMERICA
VOLUME II, CHAPTER 4
Nat Lyon looked nervously at the girl huddled in the corner of the time machine. There were white streaks down her face where recent tears had washed off the grime of several days spent in a primitive jail.
Her almost jet black hair was a tangled mess, hanging in strings to her shoulders. He wrinkled his nose in distaste at the odor filling the small compartment. There was romance in history, he thought, when viewed in the abstract, but not when one faced history in the person of a female who had languished several days in an unsanitary prison.