ied;'
but the Scotchman said she was, for the town said she was,
and therefore he would try her; and presently, in sight of
all the people, laid her body naked to the waist, with her
clothes over her head, by which fright and shame all her
blood contracted into one part of her body, and then he ran
a pin into her thigh, and then suddenly let her coats fall,
and then demanded whether she had nothing of his in her
body, but did not bleed? But she, being amazed, replied
little. Then he put his hands up her coats and pulled out
the pin, and set her aside as a guilty person and child of
the devil, and fell to try others, whom he made guilty.
Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson, perceiving the alteration of the
aforesaid woman by her blood settling in her right parts,
caused that woman to be brought again, and her clothes
pulled up to her thigh, and required the Scot to run the pin
into the same place, and then it gushed out of blood, and
the said Scot cleared her, and said she was not a child of
the devil.

If this precious wretch had not been stopped he would have declared
half the women in the north country to be witches. But the magistrates
and the people got tired of him at last, and his imposture being
discovered, he was hanged in Scotland. At the gallows he confessed
that he had been the death of 220 men and women in England and
Scotland, simply for the sake of the twenty shillings which he
generally received as blood-money.

* * * * *

The belief in _Sorcerots_, or witches' spells of a peculiar kind,
mentioned in the _Depositions_ (pages 22, 23, &c.) receives curious
modern confirmation by a kindred superstition still current among the
emancipated negroes of the United States. It was described in a letter
on "Voudouism in Virginia" which appeared in the _New York Tribune_,
dated Richmond, September 17, 1875. Mr. Moncure D. Conway, in quoting
this and commenting on it in his _Demonology and Devil-Lore_ (Vol. I.
pages 68-69), says that it belongs to a class of superstitions
generally kept close from the whites, as he believes, because of their
purely African origin. Mr. Conway is, however, probably mistaken about
the origin, seeing that the same belief prevailed in Guernsey three
centuries ago. The extract from the letter is as follows:--

If an ignorant negro is smitten with a disease which he