our?" said the
disappointed Smack. "Look you for thanks at my hand?" said the
distressed maiden. "I would you were all hanged up against each other,
with your dame for company, for you are all naught." On this repulse,
exit Smack, and enter Pluck, Blue, and Catch, the first with his head
broken, the other limping, and the third with his arm in a sling, all
trophies of Smack's victory. They disappeared after having threatened
vengeance upon the conquering Smack. However, he soon afterwards
appeared with his laurels. He told her of his various conflicts. "I
wonder," said Mrs. Joan, or Jane, "that you are able to beat them; you
are little, and they very big." "He cared not for that," he replied; "he
would beat the best two of them, and his cousins Smacks would beat the
other two." This most pitiful mirth, for such it certainly is, was mixed
with tragedy enough. Miss Throgmorton and her sisters railed against
Darne Samuel; and when Mr. Throgmorton brought her to his house by
force, the little fiends longed to draw blood of her, scratch her, and
torture her, as the witch-creed of that period recommended; yet the poor
woman incurred deeper suspicion when she expressed a wish to leave a
house where she was so coarsely treated and lay under such odious
suspicions.

It was in vain that this unhappy creature endeavoured to avert their
resentment by submitting to all the ill-usage they chose to put upon
her; in vain that she underwent unresistingly the worst usage at the
hand of Lady Cromwell, her landlady, who, abusing her with the worst
epithets, tore her cap from her head, clipped out some of her hair, and
gave it to Mrs. Throgmorton to burn it for a counter-charm. Nay, Mother
Samuel's complaisance in the latter case only led to a new charge. It
happened that the Lady Cromwell, on her return home, dreamed of her
day's work, and especially of the old dame and her cat; and, as her
ladyship died in a _year and quarter_ from that very day, it was
sagaciously concluded that she must have fallen a victim to the
witcheries of the terrible Dame Samuel. Mr. Throgmorton also compelled
the old woman and her daughter to use expressions which put their lives
in the power of these malignant children, who had carried on the farce
so long that they could not well escape from their own web of deceit but
by the death of these helpless creatures. For example, the prisoner,
Dame Samuel, was induced to say to the supposed spirit, "As I am a
witch,