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some time without speaking. Doubtless, the resuscitation of by-gone scenes gave him pain. His two companions were silent likewise.

This lull within the room made the fury of the storm outside more apparent. The wind howled, the trees groaned louder, the snow fell in blinding drifts.

In a few moments, over the noise of the tempest, came startlingly clear, the sound of sleigh bells. Nearer and nearer they came, jingling gaily, until the sounds were nearly opposite the dwelling, when they suddenly stopped.

"There's Joseph," exclaimed Mrs. Kirby, running to open the street door, to be the first to welcome her long lost uncle.

A few moments after, the bells ring out again, as the sleigh is driven around by the serving-man to the stables, and two muffled, white figures hurry up the garden walk, shake the snow from their garments on the steps, and briskly enter the house.

Henry Harland and his wife find a cordial reception awaiting them, and that night, while the storm raves and moans itself to rest in the darkness, lights could be seen gleaming brightly from the windows of the house upon the hill until a very late hour.

We shall anticipate what the doctor related to his brother the following day after his arrival, and give the substance in as few words as may be.

Filled with resentment at what he considered his father's injustice, he had left his native city for the New World, by the first outward-bound steamer. Arriving in New York without means, he picked up a precarious livelihood, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, but latterly as a billiard marker in one of the large saloons, for nearly a year, when one night, entering a rival establishment kept by a passing acquaintance, he discovered therein a friend who had given him assistance at various times, sadly intoxicated, and recklessly playing Faro. He soon perceived his friend was being fleeced by as arrant a set of black-legs as ever fingered the ace of spades, and he angrily interfered and endeavoured to get his friend away. Before he knew what had happened, there was a sudden flash in his face and a loud report, immediately succeeded by a burning pain in his shoulder from a pistol bullet; and he knew nothing further.

The friend for whom he had risked his

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life, now thoroughly sobered, could do no thing (as the villians had decamped) but have the wounded man conveyed to his own home, and being himself a young medical practitioner, he sedulously attended upon him until he recovered.

In the meantime the lodging-house keeper with whom Henry had been staying, hearing a much exaggerated account of the fracas, and seeing no more of his boarder, concluded that Henry was defunct; and as there happened to be a small balance for, lodging in his favour, he took charge of the deceased's effects in lieu thereof, quieting his conscience by writing to the missing man's friends in England informing them of the untoward event. To do this, he had doubtless found Mr. Harland's address in an old waste-book which was in Henry's trunk. Howbeit, Henry could account in no other way for the letter having been sent. After he recovered from the effects of the wound, his friend advised him not to return to his former vocation, nor to go near his former haunts at all, and in his gratitude offered to pay his expenses if he would enter college and study medicine. Henry consented, and soon after began the course. In due time he received his diploma and left the college with bright prospects before him. He soon received an appointment to accompany a scientific expedition to South America. After some months' struggling with a sickly climate, he was taken seriously ill, and was advised to return by the first steamer, as the only chance to save his life. Sadly disheartened he complied, and sailed for New York a few days after. Once on the sea, he speedily recovered, and all went well until the vessel encountered a storm in the gulf stream. The steamer became a wreck, the passengers and crew being obliged to take to the boats. Only one of these arrived safely to shore, the remainder having succumbed to the violence of the cyclone, and gone down with all on board. Among the passengers of the remaining boat was a singularly beautiful girl of seventeen, the daughter and only child of a Cuban planter, who had been separated by some fatality from her father when the first rush was made for the boats. This young maiden fascinated Henry Harland, and after they landed, learning from her own lips that now her father was dead she was left alone in the world, he brought her to New York, winning her gratitude by his kindness and delicacy. Here, his

means being low, he was obliged to place her under his friend's protection, who was then married and had forsaken his evil ways; and as the quickest way to better his own fortune he bade her good-bye, promising to return within a year and a half, and left for California.

How he fell in with his brother Reginald at Independence, and accomparied him across the plains, and mined with him through the following fall and winter, leaving with him on their ill-starred prospecting tour which ended in their falling into the cañon, we already know. It remains to be told, how, after lying at the bottom of the cañon nearly twenty-four hours, a couple of redshirted miners had passed that way by chance, wandering down the cañon looking for gold, and finding them and being unable alone to give them succour, one hurried back to camp to bring help, while the other remained until his companion returned. An hour after, a numerous party of miners arrived on the scene, and carefully lifting them from the alcove where they were lying, conveyed them up the cañon, whose lofty walls grew loftier as they proceeded, until they came to a halt where a lateral cañon opened its tremendous jaws upon them. Then, fording the little stream which emptied into the main cañon, they slowly moved up the slope until the walls decreased in height and gradually fell away until a little valley opened out before them, covered with a carpet of variegated flowers, where two or three white tents could be seen, forming the miners' camp. The next day, after a consultation had been held, it was agreed that one of the two who had been discovered under such peculiar circumstances, should be taken to the nearest ranche, or he would certainly soon die. And so Reginald was carried down the mountains by three stalwart men, who had kindly volunteered for the duty, and Henry was left to take his chances in the camp.

Assisted by a good constitution, he gradually got round again, but it was very long ere he recovered his usual strength. The miners were very kind to him, for these men, rough and uncouth and wild as many of them were, had hearts as tender as their brothers of civilization. As soon as Henry was able to be moved they changed their camp, going about ten miles to the eastward, where they had discovered a very rich gulch, and here they remained until Henry was well. After fully recovering he entered with zest into the absorbing work of digging like the rest, remembering his promise to be home by a certain time, which he resolved should be kept to the letter.

He was very successful, and before the time was ready to return to the States. Not forgetting his companion, however, and wishing to see him ere he returned, he inquired the position of the ranche to which he had been taken. He easily found it, but learned to his regret that Reginald had started off as soon as he got better, and had never returned.

Thinking it a hopeless task to attempt to find him, he left the country for good, and returned to New York, where he arrived safely with sufficient wealth to enable him to marry Marie, for whom he had so early forsaken the land of gold, and to buy a respectable practice in the city of St. Louis, where he lived comfortable and happy until his brother Reginald's letter reached him from Canada. Filled with wonder, he immediately set off, accompanied by his wife, although it was midwinter, arriving at his brother's home, as we have seen, late one night in the midst of a snow-storm.

After remaining two weeks with Reginald in Canada, the Doctor was obliged to return home, but he was accompanied by his brother, who spent the remaining years of his life alternately between Brantford and St. Louis.

R. W. DOUGLAS.

A

THE WITCHES OF WARBOYS.

BOUT four miles from the monastic town of Ramsey, in Huntingdonshire, at the northern edge of the fen district, stands the pretty village of Warboys. With its ancient church, and its clay-built and reedthatched houses, its general appearance, notwithstanding the existence of a few modern dwellings, is probably much the same as when Sir Henry Cromwell, the uncle of the Protector, used to pass through it on those stately progresses between his mansion of Hinchinbrook House and Ramsey Abbey, which earned for him the title of the Golden Knight.

In 1589, there lived in Warboys a wealthy landowner of ancient family, named Throckmorton, who, with Sir Henry Cromwell, the lord of the manor, owned nearly the whole of the parish. About fifty years before, the manor of Warboys, with possessions of the rich Abbey of St. Mary, Ramsey, had been granted to Sir Richard Williams, nephew of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, whose name he took on inheriting such portions of the plunder of the monasteries as escaped the greedy clutch of Henry and his ministers, when his uncle paid with his head for the homely face and too portly figure of the King's German bride. Sir Henry Cromwell, grandson of Sir Richard Cromwell, or Williams, appears to have been on friendly and intimate terms with his neighbour Throckmorton, whose family at the date of our story con sisted of his wife, five daughters-of ages from ten to eighteen-and about a dozen ser

vants.

In the same parish there also lived John Samuel, an old man, who, with his wife and daughter, Alice and Agnes Samuel, cultivated a small farm.

Into the minds of this quiet rural community there entered, on November 10th, 1589, a cruel delusion which resulted in the frenzied terror of two households, and the shameful death on the scaffold of an entire family.

We cannot introduce the subject to our readers in better words than those of the pamphlet before us, which was published in 1593, and is entitled "The moast Straange and Admirable Discovery of the Three

Witches of Warboys, arraigned, convicted and executed at the last Assizes, at Huntingdon, for the Bewitching of Five Daughters of Robert Throckmorton, Esquire, and divers other persons with sundrie Divellish and Grievous Torments; and also for the Bewitching and Death of the Ladie Cromwell. The like hath not been heard of in this Age! London, 1593.”

After giving some particulars of the family history of the Throckmortons, we are told, that "About the 10th November, 1589, Mistress Jane, one of the daughters of the said Master Throckmorton, being neere the age of ten years, fell upon the sodaine [sudden] into a strange kind of Sickness, the manner whereof was as followeth : Sometimes she would neese [sneeze] very lowde and thicke for the space of halfe an houre, and presently, as one in a great Trance and Swoune, lay quietly as long. Soone after she would begin to toss about her Limbs and Body, so as none was able to keep her down: Sometimes she would shake one Leg and no other Part of her, as if the Paulsie had been in it: Sometimes the other or one of her Armes and soone after her Head, as if she had been inflicted with the running Paulsie."

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In this way she had continued to be af-
fected for several months, without any
witch-
craft being suspected, when old Alice Samuel
called to pay a visit of neighbourly inquiry,
and was taken into the room where the sick
child lay. The old woman wore a black
knit worsted cap, and the child, observing
it, said to her grandmother, who was pre-
sent, "Grandmother, looke where the old
witch sitteth did you ever see one more like
a witch than she is? Take off her black
thrumbed cap, for I cannot abide to looke
on her."

This foolish fancy of a child, rendered irritable by illness and long confinement, was the first germ of the monstrous suspicion which was to cost three innocent lives. However, for the present it passed unnoticed; and it was not till after Dr. Barrow of Cambridge, "a man well known to be excellent skilful in Phisick," had been consulted re

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specting the child's disease that her parents remembered her words. This gentleman, finding that the various medicines prescribed by him had no effect, attempted to conceal his ignorance of the disease and its remedy, by suggesting "that he had had some experience of the malice of some witches, and that he verily thought there was some kind of sorcerie and witchcraft wrought towards this child." For the age in which they lived the Throckmortons do not seem to have been superstitiously inclined, for even this suggestion of the doctor made very little impression till, one month after, at the very same day and house," two more of their daughters were seized with the same malady, and complained in the same manner of Mother Samuel. Soon afterwards the youngest daughter was seized, and then the oldest, whose sufferings were much more severe than those of her sisters. The disease then attacked the female servants, six of whom were at different periods afflicted in the same way. All agreed in declaring that the painful and violent symptoms were greatly increased by the presence of old Alice, to whose malign influence they ascribed all their sufferings. Such a concurrence of testimony could not fail, in that age, to convince the most sceptical, and the parentsand indeed the whole neighbourhood-became seriously alarmed.

In the following February, Gilbert Pickering, Esq., a brother of Mrs. Throckmorton, visited his Warboys relatives. The particulars of the mysterious illness were soon communicated to him, as well as the charges made by his nieces and the servants against Mother Samuel. Mr. Throckmorton, who was evidently a just and kind-hearted man, was reluctant, even then, to believe a charge so foul against his poor old neighbour. But he yielded at last, and consented that his brother-in-law should go to her house and persuade or compel her to visit the sick-room, so that his guest, in whose opinion he placed much confidence, might be able to judge of the truth of the circumstances.

The old woman at first refused to go, but gave in to a threat of compulsion, and, accompanied by her daughter Agnes and one Cicely Rawder, a suspected confederate, entered the hall. No sooner had she done so than three of the sisters, who had been affected but had quite recovered, "fell down on the ground, strangely tormented, so that

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if they had been let lie upon the ground they would have leaped and sprung like a quick [living] pickerel, newly taken out of the water.' Then one of them-Janehaving been taken up-stairs and laid on a bed, began to scratch the counterpane, repeatedly crying, "Oh, that I had her! Oh, that I had her!" On this her uncle Pickering fetched poor old Alice, "who came as willingly as a beare to the stake," to the child's bedside, and desired her to put her hand to Jane's, which, however, she steadfastly refused to do, though he and others set her the example, whose hands "the child would scarce touch, much less scratch."

The terrified old woman was not, however, allowed to evade this crucial test of her guilt. "Without any malice to the woman, but only to taste by this experiment, whereto the child's words would tend, Master Pickering did take forcibly Mother Samuel's hand and did thrust it into the child's hand, who no sooner felt the same but presently she scratched her with such vehemence that her nayles brake into pieces with the force and earnest desire she had for revenge." Mr. Pickering then covered the old woman's hand with his own, yet the child would not scratch his hand, "but felt eagerly for that which she missed, and mourned bitterly at the disappointment." All this time her eyes were closed, and her face turned from Mr. Pickering and the old woman, and pressed against the bosom of a servant who held her down on the bed. "How then," our author triumphantly asks, “could she possibly distinguish the hands presented to her except by the directions of the evil spirit which possessed her?" A dull prosaic person might reply that even a child of ten could tell by touch alone the shrivelled fingers of an old woman from the smooth, plump palm of her elder sister, or the masculine hand of her uncle.

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But this was far from being the only proof given by the evil spirit of its presence and agency. As might be expected it was especially rampant at prayer-time, or when. grace was said or the Bible read. evidently a spirit of a bold and daring nature, and, unlike most of its congeners, who disappeared at the invocation of a holy name or the making of a sacred sign, it scorned to fly even from a long sixteenth century sermon. It was not afraid of being catechised, and answered readily, by signs, all the ques

tions put to it. When Jane was asked, "Love you the Word of God? she became so excited that two women could hardly hold her; but at, Love you witchcraft? she seemed pleased. Love you the Bible? again it shook her. Love you papistrie? it was quiet. Love you prayer? it raged. Love you the masse? it was still. So that what soever good thing you named it misliked; but at whatsoever concerned the Pope it seemed pleased and pacified."

a locke of her hair and gave it privily to Mistress Throckmorton, willing her to burn them. Whereupon the witch, perceiving herself so ill-used, said to the ladie, 'Madam, why do you use me thus? I never did you any harm as yet.' The same night Ladie Cromwell was strangely tormented in her sleep by a cat, which cat Mother Samuel had sent unto her, which cat offered to plucke off all the skin and flesh from her arms and bodie." Considering how the lady had been engaged during the day the real wonder would have been for her to have passed a dreamless night. But events graver than troubled dreams were to follow the meeting, memorable both for Lady Cromwell and Mother Samuel. "Not long after the Ladie fell very strangely sicke, and so continued until her dying day which befell in the space of a year and quarter after her being at Warboyse. The manner of her fits being much like to the children's, and that saying of Mother Samuel, 'Madam I never hurt you as yet' would never out of her mind.

We are not surprised at the intimate connection between the Pope and Satan in the minds of these honest people, when we remember the date. Little more than a year had elapsed since the Armada, equipped by the most powerful monarch on earth, and blessed by the Pope, had sailed from Spain to re-enact if possible on our English shores those truly satanic deeds, which sixteen years before had dyed French soil with the blood of thousands of her noblest sons. No won der that in small matters as well as great ones our ancestors of that generation were apt to suspect a close friendship between Pope and Belial, and to think that where one was present he would surely speak a kind word forily began to urge the old woman to confess his absent friend. In French and Spanish witchcraft trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we find the compliment reThe Devil is always represented as the chief ally and supporter of heresy, and the victories of Drake, Hawkins, and Raleigh over the soldiers of the true faith, are invariably ascribed by contemporary Spanish historians to his direct assistance.

When the extraordinary occurrences in the Throckmorton household had been for some months the talk of the neighbourhood, Sir Henry Cromwell and his family returned from London, and in due course Lady Cromwell visited her Warboys friends. "She had not been long in the room when, as they were wont to do when any came to see them, they all fell into their fits and were so grievously tormented that it pitied that good ladie's heart to see them, whereupon she caused Mother Samuel to be sent for; taking her aside, she charged her deeply with this witchcraft, using also some hard speeches to her, but she stoutly denied them all, saying that Master Throckmorton and his wife did her much wrong so to blame her without cause.' Ladie Cromwell, unable to prevail with her by good speeches, sodainly pulled off her kerchief and taking a pair of sheeres clipped off

The fits of the girls still increasing in violence and frequency, the Throckmorton fam

herself guilty. This she steadfastly refused to do, though the girls said the spirits told them that by this means alone could they be restored to perfect health, and although their parents promised forgiveness and threatened prosecution if she remained obstinate. "Also Master Donington, Doctor of Divinity, and parson of the parish of Warboyse, did moast lovinglie and painfullie entreat her to have mercie upon her soule and bodie, now in danger of moast grievous punishment in this life and after death." All was in vain. The poor old creature's only answer was, "That she would do for the children all the good she could, but for confession of this matter she would not, for it was a thing she never knew of nor consented thereto."

The inevitable catastrophe of this miserable medley of superstition, ignorance, and imposture was now at hand. The girls were tired of playing a part which, while it gratified to the fullest extent their love of deception and notoriety, must have been a constant physical and mental strain of the most wearisome character; while the poor old victim of their wickedness, harassed by solicitations, alternately soothed by promises and alarmed by threats, at length gave way, and fell on her knees, entreating Mr.

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