r and near,
Bewitched the children of the peasants,
Dried up the cows, and lamed the deer,
And sucked the eggs, and killed the pheasants."

The poor old woman was at length so sadly annoyed by her unfortunate
reputation that she took the trouble to go before a justice of the
peace, and made solemn oath that she was a Christian woman, and no
witch.

Not many years since a sad-visaged, middle-aged man might be seen in the
streets of one of our seaboard towns at times suddenly arrested in the
midst of a brisk walk and fixed motionless for some minutes in the busy
thoroughfare. No effort could induce him to stir until, in his opinion,
the spell was removed and his invisible tormentor suffered him to
proceed. He explained his singular detention as the act of a whole
family of witches whom he had unfortunately offended during a visit down
East. It was rumored that the offence consisted in breaking off a
matrimonial engagement with the youngest member of the family,--a
sorceress, perhaps, in more than one sense of the word, like that
"winsome wench and walie" in Tam O'Shanter's witch-dance at Kirk
Alloway. His only hope was that he should outlive his persecutors; and
it is said that at the very hour in which the event took place he
exultingly assured his friends that the spell was forever broken, and
that the last of the family of his tormentors was no more.

When a boy, I occasionally met, at the house of a relative in an
adjoining town, a stout, red-nosed old farmer of the neighborhood.
A fine tableau he made of a winter's evening, in the red light of a
birch-log fire, as he sat for hours watching its progress, with sleepy,
half-shut eyes, changing his position only to reach the cider-mug on the
shelf near him. Although he seldom opened his lips save to assent to
some remark of his host or to answer a direct question, yet at times,
when the cider-mug got the better of his taciturnity, he would amuse us
with interesting details of his early experiences in "the Ohio country."

There was, however, one chapter in these experiences which he usually
held in reserve, and with which "the stranger intermeddled not." He was
not willing to run the risk of hearing that which to him was a frightful
reality turned into ridicule by scoffers and unbelievers. The substance
of it, as I received it from one of his neighbors, forms as clever a
tale of witchcraft as modern times have produc