(Whether by negligence I knew not,
Or some peculiar grace to me vouchsaf'd,
For all things felt like mystery).

Yes.

MARGARET.

JOHN.

So entering in, not without fear,
I past into the family pew,

And covering up my eyes for shame,
And deep perception of unworthiness,
Upon the little hassock knelt me down,
Where I so oft had kneel'd,

A docile infant by Sir Walter's side;
And, thinking so, I wept a second flood
More poignant than the first;

But afterwards was greatly comforted.

It seem'd, the guilt of blood was passing from me Even in the act and agony

And all my sins forgiven.

of tears,

THE WITCH.

A DRAMATIC SKETCH,

OF THE

Seventeenth Century.

THE WITCH.

CHARACTERS.

Old Servant in the Family of Sir Francis Fairford. Stranger.

SERVANT.

ONE summer night Sir Francis, as it chanced, Was pacing to and fro in the avenue

That westward fronts our house,

Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted

Three hundred years ago

By a neighb'ring prior of the Fairford name.
Being o'er-task'd in thought, he heeded not

The importunate suit of one who stood by the

gate,

And begged an alms.

Some say he shoved her rudely from the gate
With angry chiding; but I can never think
(Our master's nature hath a sweetness in it)
That he could use a woman, an old woman,
With such discourtesy: but he refused her—
And better had he met a lion in his path
Than that old woman that night;

For she was one who practised the black arts, And served the devil, being since burnt for witchcraft,

She looked at him as one that meant to blast him,

And with a frightful noise,

("Twas partly like a woman's voice,

And partly like the hissing of a snake,)
She nothing said but this :-

(Sir Francis told the words)

A mischief, mischief, mischief,
And a nine-times-killing curse,

By day and by night, to the caitif wight,

Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door, And shuts up the womb of his purse,

And still she cried