,
Wi' reaming swats that drank divinely,

where the cider was as good as the company, and, issuing at midnight's
weary hour from his favourite inn, was not in a mood to run away from
anything, however fearsome. Walking, or rather rolling, across the
moor singing the burden of the last catch he had trolled with his
fellows at the ale-house, all on a sudden he stumbled into a circle of
sorcerer-cats squatting around a cross of stone. They were of immense
size and of all colours, black, grey, white, tortoise-shell, and when
he beheld them seated round the crucifix, their eyes darting fire and
the hair bristling on their backs, his song died upon his lips and all
his bellicose feelings, like those of Bob Acres, leaked out at his
finger-tips. On catching sight of him the animals set up a horrible
caterwauling that made the blood freeze in his veins. For an awful
moment the angry cats glared at him with death in their looks, and
seemed as if about to spring upon him. Giving himself up for lost, he
closed his eyes. But about his feet he could hear a strange purring,
and, glancing downward, he beheld his own domestic puss fawning upon
him with every sign of affection.

"Pass my master, Jean Foucault," said the animal.

"It is well," replied a great grey tom, whom Jean took to be the
leader; "pass on, Jean Foucault."

And Jean, the cider fumes in his head quite dissipated, staggered
away, more dead than alive.

_Druidic Magic_

The more ancient sorcerers of Brittany deserve a word of notice. Magic
among the Celtic peoples in olden times was so clearly identified with
Druidism that its origin may be said to have been Druidic. Whether
Druidism was of Celtic origin, however, is a question upon which much
discussion has taken place, some authorities, among them Rhys,
believing it to have been of non-Celtic and even non-Aryan origin, and
holding that the earliest non-Aryan or so-called Iberian people of
Britain introduced the Druidic religion to the immigrant Celts. An
argument advanced in favour of this theory is that the Continental
Celts sent their neophyte Druid priests to Britain to undergo a
special training at the hands of the British Druids, and that this
island seems to have been regarded as the headquarters of the cult.
The people of Cisalpine Gaul, for instance, had no Druidic priesthood.
Caesar has told us that in Gaul Druidic seminaries were very numerous,
and that within their walls severe study and discipli