._)

In the good old days when that royal pipsqueak, our FIRST JAMES, came to
the throne, if you were a physician of a little more than common skill
and furnished with theological opinions of a modernist complexion, or a
lonely woman with (or without) some cunning in the matter of herbs, who
cherished a peculiar (or normal) pussy-cat, you were quite likely to be
burnt out of hand. And, in her competent way, MARY JOHNSTON, in _The
Witch_ (CONSTABLE), deals with this dark blot on the escutcheon of
Christianity. Through what suffering and what joys _Dr. Aderhold_, the
kindly free-thinking mystic, and _Joan Heron_, the simple village maid,
found their ultimate and, for the times, merciful release by halter in
place of fire, readers who have nerves to spare for horror will read
with eagerness. It is indeed a dreadful story. Miss JOHNSTON is not one
of your novelists who lets herself off the contemporary document, and on
her reputation you may take it she is not far out. The grim tale serves
to show to what lengths the force of suggestion will, in times of
excitement, carry folk otherwise sober and truthful. Manifestly
preposterous evidence, freely given, was freely admitted by trained
legal minds--evidence on which innocent lives were sacrificed at the
average rate of over a thousand a month in England and Scotland in the
two centuries of the chief witch-baiting period. But, after all, have we
not, most of us, near relations who saw a quarter-of-a-million of
astrakanned Russians steal through England in the dead of an August
night? And have we not---- But I grow tedious. _The Witch_ is an
eminently readable story of adventure of the coincidental kind.

* * *

What I like best in the stories of Mr. W. W. JACOBS, apart from their
mere hilarity, is their triumphant vindication of the right to jest.
They spread themselves before me like a pageant representing the
graceful submission of the easy dupe. They tempt me to filch away chairs
from beneath stout and elderly gentlemen who are about to sit down. Take
the case of _Sergeant-Major Farrer_ in _Night Watches_ (HODDER AND
STOUGHTON). He was afraid of nothing on earth, or off it, but ghosts,
and he despised the weedy young man who was in love with his daughter.
So the weedy young man dared him to come to a haunted cottage at
midnight, and, dressed up as a spectre, terrified the soldier into
something more than a strategic retreat, with the result that he
surrendered his