help--help--help--helpless as thou thinkest; so do not
twi--twi--twi--twist thy mouth at me that way."

To which Sidonia only answered with the one word "Wait!" and
passed on, but returned soon again with a notary and two witnesses
(one was the landlord of the inn where she had left her beer),
stepped up to the chamber where Joachim sat, and bid them take
down that he had called her an accursed witch while she was
quietly going along the street to her lodgment.

Poor Wedel vainly tried to speak in his defence; the hag
maintained her assertion, and prayed that the just God who brought
all liars to destruction would avenge her cause, if it were His
gracious will, for the Scripture said (Psalm v. 7), "I will
destroy them that speak leasing." Therefore she left him and all
her other enemies in the hand of God. He would take vengeance!

And oh, horror! scarcely had she returned to her lodgment when the
poor man began to scream, "There is some one sitting within my
breast, and lifting up the breast-bone!" Thus he screamed and
screamed three days and three nights long; no physician, not even
Dr. Constantinus, could help him, and finally, when he died, his
body presented the same appearances precisely as those of Dr.
Schwalenberg and the convent porter, as the doctors who dissected
him affirmed upon oath. He was a clever man, learned and well
read, and left Annales behind him, a work which this cruel
witch caused to remain unfinished.

And further, it was a strange thing (whether of witchcraft or of
God, I cannot say) that except my gracious Duke Philip, almost