95 day. He did come. His report startled the poor farmer. Mr. and Mrs. Charlesworth, the maid, all the horses, all the cows, the farm, and the cheese-vat were* pronounced to be bewitched. A regular tariff was named for the disenchantment, — five shillings for each human being, five shillings for each horse, three and sixpence for each cow, five shillings for the cheese-vat, etc., — until the poor dupe had paid as much as seven pounds. No good result followed; the cheese was no better than before, and the inmates of the farm were (or fancied them selves to be) very much out of condition. They believed they heard at night strange noises, the bellowing of cattle and the howl ing of dogs. Tunnicliff now asserted that the whole commotion was due to the in fluence of Charlesworth's mother over cer tain wizards living at Longton, Burton-onTrent, and Derby; and that to counteract this baneful influence a large outlay of money would be needed. The farmer gave him an additional sum of thirty pounds. Still there was no improvement. And now occurred the strangest proof of deception on the one hand, and credulity on the other. The farmer took the knave Tunnicliff into his house, and allowed him to live there eleven months! The rogue lived an easy life, and fed on the best that the farm afforded. Sometimes he would make crosses on all the doors with witch-hazle, and sometimes he would burn blue lights, to overcome the power of the evil one. The farmer deposed in evidence, that one night he was taken ill; that he heard a sound like that of a carriage in the yard, and another like a rush of wind through a passage; that the house-dog entered the room, followed by " the shape of another dog all on fire;" that after the farmer had said the Lord's Prayer, the fiery dog disappeared, but the house dog stayed, with his tongue hanging out and his paws hanging down. The mistress and the maid had both of them something to say concerning this fiery dog. After this extraordinary hallucination had continued nearly a year, even the obtuse
mind of the farmer began to open to the possibility that the wise man had been mak ing a dupe of him. He consulted a lawyer, and the lawyer collected evidence sufficient to bring upon Tunnicliff a sentence of twelve months' imprisonment with hard labor, " for obtaining money under false pretences." A curious case came before the BethnalGreen police-court in 1856. The wife of a coppersmith, suffering under illness and anx iety, was told by some of her neighbors that she had a " spell " upon her, and was advised to go to a " wise woman " named Sarah McDonald, seeing that a medical man had failed to cure her. The wise woman told her that " some person was doing her an injury," and that the remedy would be the burning of ten powders. The dupe pur chased the powders at sixpence each of Mc Donald, who threw them into the fire, where they " cracked, and burned, and blazed, and bounced." The wise woman muttered some words which were supposed to be part of a charm or incantation. The silly wife re peated these visits eight times, always un known to her husband. It came out in the course of the investigation that the magic powder was only common salt; but even then the dupes (for the woman's daughter had also fallen into the snare) believed that the wise woman could " remove the spell " if she chose; indeed, the complaint before the magistrate was, not that she had done wrong, but that she would not do what she could. At Stratford-on-Avon, in October, 1867, a whole family were smitten with a belief (so as tonishing as to be itself almost unbelievable) that hideous, headless men and women were in the habit of coming down the chimneys during the night, pinching the inmates of the house, making horrible noises, and even turning the people out of their beds. A theory sprang up in the family that they were all bewitched by a neighbor, Jane Ward, and that the shedding of some of Jane's blood would be necessary to the removal of the spell. The father forthwith gave poor Jane a gash in the cheek with a knife,
