While the bedraggled and dripping Master Parris made his way to the house wiping the water and mud from his face with his wife's handkerchief, and stopping to shake himself well, before he entered the door, lest, as his wife said, "he should spoil everything in his chamber." Abigail Williams, when she went to see Mistress Ann Putnam that night, had a marvelous tale to tell; which in the course of the next day, went like wildfire through the village, growing still more and more marvelous as it went.
Abigail had seen, as I have already said, the spectre of a witch goading the furious animal with a pitchfork.

When the horse tore down the lane, it came to the little brook and of course could not cross it--for a witch cannot cross running water.

Therefore, in its new access of fury, it sprang into the pond--and threw off the minister.

Abigail further declared that then, dashing down the lane it came to the gate which shut it off from the road, and took the gate in a flying leap.

But the animal never came down again.