to delude the eyes of most men. The miracles of
witchcraft seem always to have had a very shallow subtlety and at
least, if the above explanations do not hit the truth of the process, I
can suggest no better.

"Well puffed, my pretty lad!" still cried old Mother Rigby. "Come!
another good, stout whiff, and let it be with might and main. Puff for
thy life, I tell thee! Puff out of the very bottom of thy heart, if any
heart thou hast, or any bottom to it. Well done, again! Thou didst suck
in that mouthful as if for the pure love of it."

And then the witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throwing so much magnetic
potency into her gesture that it seemed as if it must inevitably be
obeyed, like the mystic call of the lodestone when it summons the iron.

"Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one?" said she. "Step forth! Thou
hast the world before thee!"

Upon my word, if the legend were not one which I heard on my
grandmother's knee, and which had established its place among things
credible before my childish judgment could analyze its probability, I
question whether I should have the face to tell it now.

In obedience to Mother Rigby's word and extending its arm as if to
reach her outstretched hand, the figure made a step forward--a kind of
hitch and jerk, however, rather than a step--then tottered and almost
lost its balance. What could the witch expect? It was nothing, after
all, but a scarecrow stuck upon two sticks. But the strong-willed old
Beldam scowled and beckoned and flung the energy of her purpose so
forcibly at this poor combination of rotten wood and musty straw and
ragged garments that it was compelled to show itself a man, in spite of
the reality of things; so it stepped into the bar of sunshine. There it
stood, poor devil of a contrivance that it was, with only the thinnest
vesture of human similitude about it, through which was evident the
stiff, rickety, incongruous, faded, tattered, good-for-nothing
patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a heap upon the floor, as
conscious of its own unworthiness to be erect. Shall I confess the
truth? At its present point of vivification the scarecrow reminds me of
some of the lukewarm and abortive characters composed of heterogeneous
materials used for the thousandth time, and never worth using, with
which romance writers (and myself, no doubt, among the rest) have so
overpeopled the world of fiction.

But the fierce old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse