he recollected his adventure with the three cats. He thereon told the justice that he could prove by his neighbours that he had been employed all that day in cleaving wood, on which the justice discharged another volley of abuse at him. The man replied that he had certainly severely wounded three cats that day, as he could prove by witnesses; but as for a woman he had not touched one. This alarmed the justice, who now drsired him to tell his story, which being finished, the justice and his brother Shallows on the bench clearly saw that it was the Devil's work, and released him from custody, strictly charging him, as these matrons were people of high family, to keep a shut mouth, if he wished to preserve his head, and there being no special reporters in those days, the secret was preserved, whence we see that the letting off offenders of high rank is not so recent an innovation as some fondly imagine.

A similar story is told of a Highland laird, who found that nightly depredations were committed in his cellar. Attributing his losses to witches, he went into his cellar at the witches' hour of midnight armed with his broad sword, and taking no light with him. He conceived that he saw several pair of eyes like cat's eyes glaring upon him, and laid about him lustily.

On his sword striking something, he concluded that he had hit one of them, and posted off to the house of an old woman strongly suspected of witchcraft, and found her lying in bed bleeding profusely, and under the bed was discovered one of her legs severed from her body, which established the fact of her having been in his cellar under a cat-like form. The fact was attested by four ministers of those parts.

We will conclude this chapter with the story of a witch, who converted herself (not into sausages) but into a hare, which we take from the 24th chapter of Peteus Goldschmid's Verworffenen zauber und hexen-advocatem, § 2; he himself quoting J. W. Scheffer, licent. med. et Archiat, Reg., in the kingdom of Denmark, as his authority, the latter gentleman vouching it to be a notorious fact. It happened that in some part of Nieburg, a huntsman, with two dogs and a dog-boy, went out to course a hare, but were unsuccessful. He therefore turned into a countryman's house to pass the night there. He went to bed, and the dog-boy lay down on a bench with the dogs at his feet. In the middle of the night in came the hostess, and believing them to be both fast asleep, leisurely divested herself of her garments, and anointed herself from top to toe with an ointment, which

she took out of the oven.

This done, she re

dressed herself, and putting back the pot of ointment into the oven, left the room. The lad, who had had one eye open all the time, and had heard (by anticipation) of Holloway's ointment, "celebrated throughout the globe," conceived that this must be the identical miracle worker, and as he was footsore from having passed over the frozen ground, he off with his shoes and stockings, and rubbed the ointment on his legs and feet, whereby he obtained immediate and wonderful relief, to which effect we are perfectly ready to give the Professor a certificate. Clairvoyance had also enabled him to read a certificate given in the year of grace 1846, that this ointment was a sovereign cure for grease or burrasauty in a horse, and he therefore thought it would answer for dogs, on which he accordingly rubbed the dogs' feet with it.

The next morning the huntsman took his dogs and the lad into a field to try if he could find; when up started a hare, which, with the dogs and lad, ran off with such incredible swiftness, that, before he could rub his eyes, they were all out of sight. He tracked them back to the village, where, on arriving at a bakehouse, which, according to the fashion of the country,

stood somewhat back from the house, he found the lad, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and the hounds lying down, panting and breathless, with the swiftness of the race. He rather angrily inquired of the lad what he had been doing to the dogs? on which the latter replied that he had given chase to a hare, which had sprung into the oven, and there turned into a woman. On his looking into the oven, he found his hostess quietly squatted inside the oven, and then the lad told him the whole affair.

Now, why a woman should convert herself into a hare by way of amusement is inexplicable, except upon the single ground that it is the delight of the sex to be run after; and we therefore suppose that this lady was a village coquette, whose husband was old and ugly, and who, consequently, adopted all measures to secure the attentions of younger lovers.

CHAPTER XIX.

"Fictls meminent nos jocari fabulis."

PHOD. I., PROL. I.

"Let it be remembered that we sport in fabled stories."

OF GHOSTS AND APPARITIONS.

The worthy doctor, after admitting that a great deal of what is related of ghosts is fabulous, yet strenuously maintains that there is no doubt of their existence, and that it had never been questioned till the "so-called" Reformation came in. He then proceeds to hit the