rest of the servants then present, took off the
poor man's clothes, and found to their great surprise, the mark of the
iron that was heated and thrown into the churn, deeply impressed upon his
back. This account I had from Mr. Collett's own mouth, who being a man of
unblemished character, I verily believe to be matter of fact.

"I am, Sir, your obliged humble Servant,

"SAM. MANNING."

The only falsehood, probably, in the history is the manner of the poor
fellow's death, for either he was foully murdered on a wild suspicion of
being concerned in the witching of a dirty milk vessel, or he died
suddenly of some ordinary organic complaint, and the circumstances of the
horse-shoe and the scarred back were purely imaginary. But again in 1751
was witch blood actually poured out on English soil, and the cry of the
innocent murdered sent up to heaven in vain for mercy. At Tring, in
Hertfordshire, lived an old man, one Osborne, and his wife; poor as
witches always were; old--past seventy both of them--and obliged to beg
from door to door for what, if the popular superstition was true, the
devil had given them power to possess at any moment for themselves. But
this was a point of view no one ever took. In the rebellion of '45, just
six years ago, old Mother Osborne had gone to one Butterfield, a dairyman
living at Gubblecot, to beg for buttermilk. Butterfield was a churlish
fellow, and told her roughly that he had not enough for his hogs, still
less for her. Says old Mother Osborne, grumbling, "The Pretender will soon
have thee and thy hogs too." Now the Pretender and the devil were in
league together, according to the belief of many, and old Mother Osborne
might just as well have told the dairyman at once that he was going to the
devil, or that she would send her imps to bewitch him; for soon
Butterfield's calves became distempered, and soon his cows died, and his
affairs went so far to the bad that he left his dairy and took a public
house, in hopes that the imps which could bewitch the one might be
powerless against the other. But he reckoned without his host, for in 1751
he himself was bewitched; he had fits--bad fits--and sent for a white
witch all the way from Northamptonshire to tell him what ailed him. The
white witch told him he was bewitched, and bade six men, with staves and
pitchforks hanging round their necks as counter charms for their own
safety, watch his house night and day. Doubtless they discovered all they