f the great
gray tom-cat that he met his death. He was fired at by a farmer, the
wounded cat crawled into the wizard's cottage, and the demon restored to
human form was found dying later on with a gun-shot charge in his ribs.
There were people alive a dozen--nay, half a dozen--years ago, who
_knew_ these things, to whom it was blasphemous to dispute them.

The demon's earthly name was Rufus Smith, and he lived 'by Dudley Wood
side, where the wind blows cold,' as the local ballad puts it His mother
had dealt in the black art before him, and was ducked to death in the
Severn by the bridge in the ancient town of Bewdley. He was a lean man,
with a look of surly fear. It is likely enough that he half expected
some of his invocations to come true one fine day or other, with
consequences painful to himselt The old notions are dying out fast, but
it used to be said in that region that when a man talked to himself he
was talking with the universal enemy. Rufus and his mother were great
chatterers in solitude, and what possible companion could they have but
one?

It is not to be supposed that all the ministrations for which the people
of the country-side relied upon Rufus were mischievous. If he had done
nothing but overlook cattle and curse crops, and so forth, he would
have been hunted out. Some passably good people have been said, upon
occasions, to hold a candle to the devil. With a similar diversion
from general principle, Rufus was known occasionally to perform acts
of harmless utility. He charmed away warts and corns, he prepared love
philtres, and sold lucky stones. He foreran the societies which insure
against accident, and would guarantee whole bones for a year or a
lifetime, according to the insurer's purse or fancy. He told fortunes by
the palm and by the cards, and was the sole proprietor and vendor of a
noted heal-all salve of magic properties.

He and his mother had gathered together between them a respectable
handful of ghastly trifles, which were of substantial service alike to
him and to his clients. A gentleman coming to have his corns or warts
charmed away would be naturally assisted towards faith by the aspect of
the polecat's skeleton, the skulls of two or three local criminals,
and the shrivelled, mummified dead things which hung about the walls or
depended head downwards from the ceiling. These decorations apart, the
wizard's home was a little commonplace. It stood by itself in a
bare hollow, an unpictu