doors, and her favourite haunt was a sunny
knoll in the plantations, where she would sit
for hours with either her mother or Mistress
Gilbert. Any sudden noise: even the flight of
a bird from one branch to another, would
cause her to tremble convulsively, as if with
overwhelming dread; for the poor girl had
heard it said that she was bewitched, and
the idea worked in her imagination until she
believed it. It happened one morning while
in the wood, as usual, that Rose Nicholl—
with her baby in her arms on her way to the
Hall, to show him to Lady Bedinfield, as she
had received commands to do—passed within
sight of Mistress Lucy and the waiting-
woman. Rose was singing as blithely as any
bird, and never noticed the two under the
trees; but Mistress Lucy began to shudder
and cry out.

"Is it Rose Nicholl that has bewitched you,
Mistress Lucy?" asked Mistress Gilbert,
earnestly.

"Yes, yes," replied the nervous creature,
following the retreating figure with wild
eyes.

"I always thought so! I saw the devil's
mark upon her neck the day she was
married," cried the waiting-woman, triumphantly.

When they returned home, Mistress Lucy
told her mother that all her deformity and
all her present illness had been inflicted upon
her by the malice of Rose Nicholl, the smith's
wife, and that the sight of her threw her into
convulsions such as those in which her sister
died. Lady Bedinfield was troubled, but
suspicious. She consulted her husband, who
was remarkable for anything rather than
sagacity, and proposed to have Rose tried by
one of the common prickers who made it
their business to go from place to place
discovering witches and bringing them to
punishment. Sir Roger consented, and
Mistress Gilbert having undertaken to
produce a witch-finder, innocent, unconscious
Rose was indicated to him as a suspected
person; and, full of the importance of his
terrible office, the pricker went to the smith's
house, when he was at his forge. Master
Simon also was away from home, and Rose,
with her baby asleep in her lap, sat sewing
diligently, like the good housewife and house-
mother that she was. The pricker obtained
an entrance into the cottage by pleading that
he had walked far and was tired; so the
unsuspicious Rose bade him rest himself, and
gave him some refreshment. Presently two
of the village women sauntered in, ostensibly
to see the baby, but in reality, by pre-concert
with the pricker, to help in the examination.
They all began to talk, and presently led the
conversation round to the subject of witches
and warlocks. There had been many
hundreds of wicked and cruel executions in
England during recent years for the crime ot
witchcraft, and Rose had heard of them, like
others: indeed, a witch had been swum and
drowned in Hambledon mill-pond within her
own memory. She expressed great
commiseration for this old woman, and said that
she believed many unfortunates were the
victims of the malice of their enemies, rather
than real criminals, as was pretended. The
pricker took umbrage at this remark, perhaps
because Mistress Gilbert's bribe lay heavy on
his conscience at the moment; and, thinking
to daunt Rose, he exclaimed, that she herself
was a notorious witch and evil-liver, and he
was there to prove it.

Rose started up; and, when the two women
approached to lay hold on her, she broke from
them, and rushed out at the door shrieking:
"Richard, Richard, help me!"

The hammer was not going in the forge
just then, and the smith heard her. Clutching
a stout cudgel, he ran to the spot; and,
while the two assistants decamped, he seized
the pricker in a grasp like a vice, and, without
waiting for explanation, proceeded to
belabour him so soundly that the miserable
official was likely to have a skin full of
sorely-aching bones for a month to come.

When her husband paused, Rose said,
bitterly weeping: "He is a witch-finder,
Richard, and declares that I am a witch. He
came here to prove it. O, where, where shall
we fly? You know, dear husband, that I am
your own true wife, and no wicked witch.
Don't you, love? " She clung to him beseechingly.
In those good old times there were
few ties of blood or of affection that did not
break under this terrible accusation; but the
smith loved his Rose dearly; and, having an
intense antipathy to the manipulations of such
odious gentry as the pricker, his wrath was
so far increased by the idea that they might
have been exercised on his young wife, as to
find it indispensable to beat him again, and
then to throttle him until he confessed that
he had received a bribe from Mistress
Gilbert to accuse Rose. A second shaking made
him give up the instrument with which he
proposed to prick for the devil's mark, which
all witches bore on their persons. This
instrument was a steel needle with a hollow
handle, into which it retired under very
slight pressure, coming out again when that
pressure was withdrawn, so that though it
appeared to run into the flesh, it in reality
did not even break the skin; as the devil's
mark could be pricked, as was asserted,
without the witch feeling any pain and
without blood following the withdrawal of
the needle, this ingenious piece of mechanism
answered every malicious purpose; and, with
its lying witness, did to death many a poor
innocent wretch; who, after conviction, was
tortured into confessing every enormity that
the diseased imaginations of wicked or
superstitious examiners could devise. The smith
was something of a mechanician himself,
and immediately discovered the secret of the
instrument, which he determined to carry to
Parson Phillips. As luck would have it,
the minister coming across the green at the