said that a few days before, while she was plucking grass for the cattle
under the garden-hedge by the road, she heard the husband and wife
quarrelling violently again, and that the goodman threw in her teeth that
he now knew of a certainty that she had a familiar spirit, and that he
would straightway go and tell it to the priest. Albeit this is only a
child's tale, it may be true for all that, seeing that children and fools,
they say, speak the truth.

But be that as it may. _Summa_, my old warden grew worse and worse; and
though I visited him every morning and evening--as I use to do to my
sick--in order to pray with him, and often observed that he had somewhat
on his mind, nevertheless he could not disburthen himself of it, seeing
that old Lizzie never left her post.

This went on for a while, when at last one day, about noon, he sent to beg
me to scrape a little silver off the new sacramental cup, because he had
been told that he should get better if he took it mixed with the dung of
fowls. For some time I would not consent, seeing that I straightway
suspected that there was some devilish mischief behind it; but he begged
and prayed, till I did as he would have me.

And lo and behold, he mended from that very hour; so that when I went to
pray with him at evening, I found him already sitting on the bench with a
bowl between his knees, out of which he was supping broth. However, he
would not pray (which was strange, seeing that he used to pray so gladly,
and often could not wait patiently for my coming, insomuch that he sent
after me two or three times if I was not at hand, or elsewhere employed);
but he told me he had prayed already, and that he would give me the cock
whose dung he had taken for my trouble, as it was a fine large cock, and
he had nothing better to offer for my Sunday's dinner. And as the poultry