preparations for the great ordeal, and on a given night she and the
bewitched householder, together with his wife and four or five trusty
friends with drawn swords, shut themselves up in a room, and commenced
their mysterious ceremonial. There was the boiling of occult herbs;
the roasting of a beeve's heart stuck full of nails and pins; the
reading of certain passages from the family Bible; a mighty
gesticulating with the swords, which were first thrust up the chimney
to prevent the Black Witch from coming down, and anon were pointed
earthward to hinder him from rising up; and so the ridiculous game
went on. The only person who benefited was of course the imposter, who
was paid for her services; while we may perhaps charitably hope that
her dupes also were afterwards easier in their minds. The writer adds
that many other persons besides this man at St. Brelade's, had
latterly believed themselves bewitched, and had consulted wizards, who
were thus driving a profitable trade.

* * * * *

Among the indications and symptoms of a witch, are reckoned various
bodily marks and spots, said to be insensible to pain (page 20),
inability to shed tears, &c. The pricking of witches was at one time a
lucrative profession both in England and Scotland, one of the most
noted prickers being a wretched imposter named Matthew Hopkins who was
sent for to all parts of the country to exercise his vile art. Ralph
Gardner, in his _England's Grievance Discovered_ (1655), speaks also
of two prickers, Thomas Shovel and Cuthbert Nicholson, who, in 1649
and 1650, were sent by the magistrates of Newcastle-on-Tyne, into
Scotland, there to confer with another very able man in that line and
bring him back to Newcastle. They were to have twenty shillings, but
the Scotchman three pounds, per head _of all they could convict_, and