nce. Most unwilling was his testimony, and given with many
tears; but he admitted that two years since, when residing at York, he
was suddenly afflicted with a sore disease, while labouring for Isaac
the rich Jew, in his vocation of a joiner; that he had been unable to
stir from his bed until the remedies applied by Rebecca's directions,
and especially a warming and spicy-smelling balsam, had in some degree
restored him to the use of his limbs. Moreover, he said, she had given
him a pot of that precious ointment, and furnished him with a piece of
money withal, to return to the house of his father, near to Templestowe.
"And may it please your gracious Reverence," said the man, "I cannot
think the damsel meant harm by me, though she hath the ill hap to be a
Jewess; for even when I used her remedy, I said the Pater and the Creed,
and it never operated a whit less kindly--"

"Peace, slave," said the Grand Master, "and begone! It well suits brutes
like thee to be tampering and trinketing with hellish cures, and to be
giving your labour to the sons of mischief. I tell thee, the fiend can
impose diseases for the very purpose of removing them, in order to bring
into credit some diabolical fashion of cure. Hast thou that unguent of
which thou speakest?"

The peasant, fumbling in his bosom with a trembling hand, produced a
small box, bearing some Hebrew characters on the lid, which was, with
most of the audience, a sure proof that the devil had stood apothecary.
Beaumanoir, after crossing himself, took the box into his hand, and,
learned in most of the Eastern tongues, read with ease the motto on the
lid,--"The Lion of the tribe of Judah hath conquered."

"Strange powers of Sathanas." said he, "which can convert Scripture into
blasphemy, mingling poison with our necessary food!--Is there no leech
here who can tell us the ingredients of this mystic unguent?"

Two mediciners, as they called themselves, the one a monk, the other
a barber, appeared, and avouched they knew nothing of the materials,
excepting that they savoured of myrrh and camphire, which they took to
be Oriental herbs. But with the true professional hatred to a successful
practitioner of their art, they insinuated that, since the medicine was
beyond their own knowledge, it must necessarily have been compounded
from an unlawful and magical pharmacopeia; since they themselves, though
no conjurors, fully understood every branch of their art, so far as it
might be exe