--his grandmother had been burned as a witch. When that kind of a malady
is in the blood it does not always come out with just one burning. Just
now was not a good time for Ursula and Marget to be having dealings with
a member of such a family, for the witch-terror had risen higher during
the past year than it had ever reached in the memory of the oldest
villagers. The mere mention of a witch was almost enough to frighten us
out of our wits. This was natural enough, because of late years there
were more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old times it had
been only old women, but of late years they were of all ages--even
children of eight and nine; it was getting so that anybody might turn out
to be a familiar of the Devil--age and sex hadn't anything to do with it.
In our little region we had tried to extirpate the witches, but the more
of them we burned the more of the breed rose up in their places.

Once, in a school for girls only ten miles away, the teachers found that
the back of one of the girls was all red and inflamed, and they were
greatly frightened, believing it to be the Devil's marks. The girl was
scared, and begged them not to denounce her, and said it was only fleas;
but of course it would not do to let the matter rest there. All the
girls were examined, and eleven out of the fifty were badly marked, the
rest less so. A commission was appointed, but the eleven only cried for
their mothers and would not confess. Then they were shut up, each by
herself, in the dark, and put on black bread and water for ten days and
nights; and by that time they were haggard and wild, and their eyes were
dry and they did not cry any more, but only sat and mumbled, and would
not take the food. Then one of them confessed, and said they had often
ridden through the air on broomsticks to the witches' Sabbath, and in a
bleak place high up in the mountains had danced and drunk and caroused
with several hundred other witches and the Evil One, and all had
conducted themselves in a scandalous way and had reviled the priests and