d dog in the midst of a congregation would not have been more
dangerous than this wicked and mischievous boy, who, looking around him,
could, according to his own caprice, put any one or more of the people
in peril of tortures or of death."

Four of the accused only were sent to London, and examined by the king
in person. In the end they were set at liberty, but not from the
sagacity of the examiners,--the boy Robinson having confessed that he
was suborned to give false evidence against them. One of these poor
creatures, strange to say, had confessed the crime with which she was
charged. In the Bodl. Lib. Dods. MSS. v.61, p.47, is the confession
itself, wherein she gives a circumstantial and minute account of the
transactions which took place between her and a familiar whom she calls
Mamilian, describing the meetings, feasts, and all the usual routine of
witchery and possession.--(See Whitaker's _Whalley_.)

* * * * *

PART FIRST.

The mill went merrily round, and Giles the miller sang and whistled from
morning to noon, and from noon till evening, save when the mulcting-dish
was about to be embowelled in the best sack; a business too serious for
such levity, requiring careful and deliberate thought.

Goody Dickisson, the miller's wife, was a fat, round, pursy dame, of
some forty years' travel through this wilderness of sorrow, and a
decent, honest, sober, and well-conditioned housewife she was; cleanly,
thrifty, and had an excellent cheesepress, which the whole neighbourhood
could testify.

But the days of man's happiness are numbered, and woman's too, as the
following narrative will set forth.

The mill had stood, for ages it may be, at the foot of a wild and steep
cliff, forming the eastern extremity of the dreary range of
Cliviger;[37] an elevated mountainous pass, from whence the waters
descend both to the eastern and western seas. Upon those almost
inaccessible crags the rock-eagle and falcon built their nests, unscared
by the herdsmen, who in vain attempted their destruction. Through this
pass, the very gorge of the English Apennines, the Calder,[38] a rapid
and narrow torrent, brought an unfailing supply of grist to the
ever-going hopper of Giles Dickisson.

Not far from this happy abode, in the innermost part of the gorge, where
the rocks of Lancashire and Yorkshire frown in close but harmless
proximity, at an immense height,--the road and this narrow cleft only
s