Lizzie. But I was not quite dressed before she sent the impudent constable
to beg that I would go to her with all speed and give her the sacrament,
seeing that she had become very weak during the night. I had my own
thoughts on the matter, and followed the constable as fast as I could,
though not to give her the sacrament, as indeed anybody may suppose. But
in my haste, I, weak old man that I was, forgot to take my witnesses with
me; for all the misery I had hitherto suffered had so clouded my senses
that it never once came into my head. None followed me save the impudent
constable; and it will soon appear how that this villain had given himself
over body and soul to Satan to destroy my child, whereas he might have
saved her. For when he had opened the prison (it was the same cell wherein
my child had first been shut up), we found old Lizzie lying on the ground
on a truss of straw, with a broom for a pillow (as though she were to fly
to hell upon it, as she no longer could fly to Blockula), so that I
shuddered when I caught sight of her. Scarce was I come in when she cried
out fearfully, "I'm a witch, I'm a witch! Have pity upon me, and give me
the sacrament quick, and I will confess everything to you!" And when I
said to her, "Confess, then!" she owned that she, with the help of the
Sheriff, had contrived all the witchcraft in the village, and that my
child was as innocent thereof as the blessed sun in heaven. Howbeit that
the Sheriff had the greatest guilt, inasmuch as he was a warlock and a
witch's priest, and had a spirit far stronger than hers, called Dudaim,
which spirit had given her such a blow on the head in the night as she
should never recover. This same Dudaim it was that had raked up the crops,
heaped sand over the amber, made the storm, and dropped the frog into my
daughter her lap; _item_, carried off her old goodman through the air.

And when I asked her how that could be, seeing that her goodman had been a
child of God until very near his end, and much given to prayer; albeit I
had indeed marvelled why he had other thoughts in his last illness; she