et up by it and so vain of it that her pride in it leaked out pretty
plainly. It was beautiful to see her veiled delight in this grandeur,
poor old thing, but when we heard the name of the servant we wondered
if she had been altogether wise; for although we were young, and often
thoughtless, we had fairly good perception on some matters. This boy was
Gottfried Narr, a dull, good creature, with no harm in him and nothing
against him personally; still, he was under a cloud, and properly so,
for it had not been six months since a social blight had mildewed the
family--his grandmother had been burned as a witch. When that kind of
a malady is in the blood it does not always come out with just one
burning. Just now was not a good time for Ursula and Marget to be having
dealings with a member of such a family, for the witch-terror had risen
higher during the past year than it had ever reached in the memory of
the oldest villagers. The mere mention of a witch was almost enough to
frighten us out of our wits. This was natural enough, because of late
years there were more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old
times it had been only old women, but of late years they were of all
ages--even children of eight and nine; it was getting so that anybody
might turn out to be a familiar of the Devil--age and sex hadn't
anything to do with it. In our little region we had tried to extirpate
the witches, but the more of them we burned the more of the breed rose
up in their places.

Once, in a school for girls only ten miles away, the teachers found that
the back of one of the girls was all red and inflamed, and they were
greatly frightened, believing it to be the Devil's marks. The girl was
scared, and begged them not to denounce her, and said it was only fleas;
but of course it would not do to let the matter rest there. All the
girls were examined, and eleven out of the fifty were badly marked, the
rest less so. A commission was appointed, but the eleven only cried for
their mothers and would not confess. Then they were shut up, each by
herself, in the dark, and put on black bread and water for ten days and
nights; and by that time they were haggard and wild, and their eyes were
dry and they did not cry any more, but only sat and mumbled, and would
not take the food. Then one of them confessed, and said they had often
ridden through the air on broomsticks to the witches' Sabbath, and in a
bleak place high up in the mountains had danc