y been
given. In those which I am about to quote, the wizard or witch who is
mentioned is a human being, but one who has made a compact with evil
spirits, and has thereby become endowed with strange powers. Such
monsters as these are, throughout their lives, a terror to the
district they inhabit; nor does their evil influence die with them,
for after they have been laid in the earth, they assume their direst
aspect, and as Vampires bent on blood, night after night, they go
forth from their graves to destroy. As I have elsewhere given some
account of Slavonic beliefs in witchcraft,[357] I will do little more
at present than allow the stories to speak for themselves. They will
be recognized as being akin to the tales about sorcery current farther
west, but they are of a more savage nature. The rustic warlocks and
witches of whom we are accustomed to hear have little, if any, of that
thirst for blood which so unfavorably characterizes their Slavonic
counterparts. Here is a story, by way of example, of a most gloomy
nature.

THE WITCH GIRL.[358]

Late one evening, a Cossack rode into a village, pulled up at
its last cottage, and cried--

"Heigh, master! will you let me spend the night here?"

"Come in, if you don't fear death!"

"What sort of a reply is that?" thought the Cossack, as he
put his horse up in the stable. After he had given it its food
he went into the cottage. There he saw its inmates, men and
women and little children, all sobbing and crying and praying to
God; and when they had done praying, they began putting on
clean shirts.

"What are you crying about?" asked the Cossack.

"Why you see," replied the master of the house, "in our
village Death goes about at night. Into whatsoever cottage she
looks, there, next morning, one has to put all the people who
lived in it into coffins, and carry them off to the graveyard. To-night
it's our turn."

"Never fear, master! 'Without God's will, no pig gets its
fill!'"

The people of the house lay down to sleep; but the Cossack
was on the look-out and never closed an eye. Exactly at midnight
the window opened. At the window appeared a witch all
in white. She took a sprinkler, passed her arm into the cottage,
and was just on the point of sprinkling--when the Cossack
suddenly gave his sabre a sweep, and cut her arm off close to
the shoulder. The witch howled, squealed, yelped like a dog,
and fled away. B