ged more to sportiveness than to
criminality;--they are the poetry interspersed on the pages of the
history of opinions;--they seem to be dreams of sleeping reason, and not
the putrescence of its mouldering carcase; but this has no bright side,
no redeeming quality whatever."[39]

The human body is not more liable to contagion than is that faculty of
the mind which is called imagination. That many of the accused believed
in their crime, we have sufficient evidence in their own voluntary
confessions, as well as in the traditions handed down to us on this
subject. Both knavery and delusion were at work, as the following
incidents will abundantly manifest. They have been selected from a wide
range of materials on this important topic, as illustrating the varied
operations of the same delusion on different orders and grades of
mind,--the temptations warily suited to each disposition, all tending to
the same crime, and ultimately to the same punishment.

Our lusty miller had no children: it was a secret source of grief and
anxiety to his dame, and many an hour of repining and discontent was the
consequence. Yet Giles Dickisson's song was none the heavier; and if his
wheel went merrily round, his spirits whirled with it, and danced and
frolicked in the sunshine of good humour, like the spray and sparkle
from his own mill-race. But a change was gathering on his wife's
countenance: her grief grew sullen; her aspect stern and
forbidding:--some hidden purpose was maturing: she seldom spoke to her
husband. When addressed, she seemed to arouse from a sort of stupor,
unwillingly forcing a reply. "She is bewitched," thought Giles. He had
his suspicions; but he could not confidently point out the source of the
mischief.

One evening, as Goody Dickisson was sitting alone, pondering and
discontented, there came in one Mal Spencer, a dark and scowling hag, to
whom Giles bore no good-will. He had beforetime forbidden his wife to
hold any intercourse with this witch-woman, who was an object generally
of suspicion and mistrust. If the "evil eye" can be supposed to inhabit
a human frame, this old woman had an undisputed claim to its possession.
This night, however, old Molly came hobbling in without further ceremony
than a "Good e'en, thou Dickisson wife," and took her seat opposite the
dame in the miller's own chair. "Aroynt thee, witch," should have been
returned to such an ill-omened salute; but the miller's wife was either
unwilling o