the unfortunate
was crawling up the face of a huge table of stone that had fallen from
the opposite wall and lay canted against it.

"Hello!" shouted the man overhead. "Are you hurt much?"

The victim of the accident slowly got upon his feet, felt cautiously of
his legs and ribs, and began to search through his pockets, his face
betraying an anxiety that grew deeper and deeper as the search went on.
In due time the answer came back, deliberate, sad, and nasal, but
distinct above the roar of the torrent: "Waal, I ain't hurt much, but
I'll be durned if I haven't lost my jack-knife!"

And he was pulled out of the gorge without it.

SALEM AND OTHER WITCHCRAFT

The extraordinary delusion recorded as Salem witchcraft was but a
reflection of a kindred insanity in the Old World that was not extirpated
until its victims had been counted by thousands. That human beings should
be accused of leaguing themselves with Satan to plague their fellows and
overthrow the powers of righteousness is remarkable, but that they should
admit their guilt is incomprehensible, albeit the history of every
popular delusion shows that weak minds are so affected as to lose control
of themselves and that a whimsey can be as epidemic as small-pox.

Such was the case in 1692 when the witchcraft madness, which might have
been stayed by a seasonable spanking, broke out in Danvers,
Massachusetts, the first victim being a wild Irishwoman, named Glover,
and speedily involved the neighboring community of Salem. The mischiefs
done by witches were usually trifling, and it never occurred to their
prosecutors that there was an inconsistency between their pretended
powers and their feeble deeds, or that it was strange that those who
might live in regal luxury should be so wretchedly poor. Aches and pains,
blight of crops, disease of cattle, were charged to them; children
complained of being pricked with thorns and pins (the pins are still
preserved in Salem), and if hysterical girls spoke the name of any feeble
old woman, while in flighty talk, they virtually sentenced her to die.
The word of a child of eleven years sufficed to hang, burn, or drown a
witch.

Giles Corey, a blameless man of eighty, was condemned to the mediaeval
_peine forte et dure_, his body being crushed beneath a load of rocks and
timbers. He refused to plead in court, and when the beams were laid upon
him he only cried, "More weight!" The shade of the unhappy victim haunted
the sc