ular mind,--I
shall not undertake to say. It is certain that the poor old women who are
thus stigmatized seem to have little power to help themselves in this
world, or, if real tamperers with the powers of darkness, any enjoyable
expectations from the other. But this I do know, that I was riding, not
many days since, with my lawyer, a man of considerable acuteness, though
a little eccentric at times, coming from K--'s Island, where we had been
on some business; and as we neared the turn of the causeway to the main
road, he pulled up the chaise, jumped out, and placing himself on a broad
flat rock by the road-side, began violently to dance up and down and to
shake his clothes. 'Good Heavens!' cried I, 'are you mad?' 'Oh, no,' said
he, resuming his seat, 'but my mother always told me, that whenever I was
coming away from K--'s Island, I must stand upon that rock and shake the
witches off!'"

"But your story, Aunt Judith! your story," we all cried out, and after a
little more hesitation the good woman _prit la parole_, as Madame de
Staeel so often phrases it in "Corinne."

"When I was a grown-up girl," said she, "I and my older sister, who had
lost her husband at sea, lived with my mother, who was also a widow. We
had few of this world's goods, but health and energy enough to take care
of ourselves. At one time, we moved into half a house, in a decent
quarter of the town, the other part of which was occupied by an old woman
called by the neighbors 'Granny Holt.' Coming from a street of the town
at some distance, we had heard nothing that I remember about her; but the
day had not gone by, before it was made fully known to us by such
acquaintances as we saw, that we had taken up our abode in the same house
with a person of a very crabbed disposition, whom all the neighborhood
looked upon as a witch. This was not very agreeable news, but we tried
to make the best of it. Our house was near the river-side, and we were
surrounded by the families of those who followed the sea, and we
endeavored to flatter ourselves with the idea, that idle tales of
marvelous things are very common among that class of population; and that
the stories we heard were mere gossip, as we whispered to ourselves, for
fear of being overheard through the thin partition which divided us from
the other tenant. But, 'No!' said one of our callers in a low voice--one
of the Pearse girls (a young lady, by the way, about seventy, but Aunt
Judith was of a certain