These stories of witches so terrified me, that my sleeps were broken, and in my dreams I always had a fancy of a witch being in the room with me.  I know now that it was only nervousness; but though I can laugh at it now as well as you, ladies, if you knew what I suffered, you would be thankful that you have had sensible people about you to instruct you and teach you better.  I was let grow up wild like an ill weed, and thrived accordingly.  One night that I had been terrified in my sleep with my imaginations, I got out of bed, and crept softly to the adjoining room.  My room was next to where my aunt usually sat when she was alone.  Into her room I crept for relief from my fears.  The old lady was not yet retired to rest, but was sitting with her eyes half open, half closed; her spectacles tottering upon her nose; her head nodding over her prayer-book; her lips mumbling the words as she read them, or half read them, in her dozing posture; her grotesque appearance; her old-fashioned dress, resembling what I had seen in that fatal picture in Stackhouse; all this, with the dead time of night, as it seemed to me, (for I had gone through my first sleep,) all joined to produce a wicked fancy in me, that the form which I had beheld was not my aunt but some witch.  Her mumbling of her prayers confirmed me in this shocking idea.  I had read in Glanvil of those wicked creatures reading their prayers backwards, and I thought that this was the operation which her lips were at this time employed about.  Instead of flying to her friendly lap for that protection which I had so often experienced when I have been weak and timid, I shrunk back terrified and bewildered to my bed, where I lay in broken sleeps and miserable fancies, till the morning, which I had so much reason to wish for, came.  My fancies a little wore away with the light, but an impression was fixed, which could not for a long time be done away.  In the day-time, when my father and mother were about the house, when I saw them familiarly speak to my aunt, my fears all vanished; and when the good creature has taken me upon her knees, and shewn me any kindness more than ordinary, at such times I have melted into tears, and longed to tell her what naughty foolish fancies I had had of her.  But when night returned, that figure which I had seen recurred;—­the posture, the half-closed eyes, the mumbling and muttering which I had heard, a confusion was in my head, who it was I had seen that night:—­it was my aunt, and it was not my aunt:—­it was that good creature who loved me above all the world, engaged at her good task of devotions—­perhaps praying for some good to me.  Again, it was a witch,—­a creature hateful to God and man, reading backwards the good prayers; who would perhaps destroy me.  In these conflicts of mind I passed several weeks, till, by a revolution in my fate, I was removed to the house of a female relation of my mother’s, in a distant part of the county, who had come on a