ed flames came in
the intervals out of her mouth, and her body was continually slashed and
cut with a knife, and imps in the shape of frogs, and toads, and mice, and
the like, for ever haunted her; and the wise man's wife was the cause of
all. Then the neighbours took some of the foam which Jane had always
hanging round her mouth, and burnt it for a counter charm, and to hurt the
besetting witch; and chancing to light on the woman, they told her they
would take her to the maid to be scratched. To which she made answer,
"That if they had not come she could not have stayed any longer from her:"
so great was the potency of the burnt foam. For nine months did this girl
befool her world, and then--the cunning man and his wife being probably
put to death--she managed to get well of all her ailments, and to find
meat and milk more sustaining diet than crooked pins, hair, or wool;
though, indeed, the meat and milk had never been wanting in the dark hours
undiscovered, for Jane had taken care to live as usual when the night had
blinded prying eyes, and there was no one to count off the tale of slices
cut and devoured.

Fortunately for the sanity of society, every one did not believe these
monstrous stories. Webster's book, published about this time, was one of
those brave few which openly discredited the truth of the witch stories
afloat in the world, and made as great a sensation, or even greater, than
the grand old work of Reginald Scot. Like him, Webster doubted the truth
of the witch of Endor's enchantments, which the upholders of the faith
rested on as the very keystone of their position. The witch herself he
calls "a cozening quean," "a crafty subtile quean," "an idolatrous,
wicked, and couzening witch:" for they understood the value of forcible
language in those days: Saul is "a drowned puppet"--to Glanvil's intense
wrath at this rude mishandling of a "noble prince;" Samuel but "a
confederate knave," or "but a lying phantasie;" in the conjurations the
witch, "casting herself into a feigned Trance, lay grovelling upon the
Earth with her face downwards, and so changing her voice did mutter, and
murmur, and peep, and chirp, like a bird coming forth of the shell;" with
other knockdown assertions of common sense not afraid, by which the curate
of Kildwick demolished the whole argument of supernaturalism, and left the
poor witch of Endor and Saul himself not an inch of ground to stand on. So
with all the other stories that came