The virtual supervision assumed by the Suprema over all cases of witchcraft was exercised with a moderation which must have been greatly discouraging to believers. Under this impulsion, the tribunals became exceedingly lenient, frequently exercising the power left to them of suspending cases. One that is exceedingly significant occurred at Valladolid, in 1622. At the instance of her confessor, Casilda de Pabanes, a girl of 19, from Villamiel, near Burgos, presented herself and confessed that, at Christmas 1615 (when she was 12 or 13 years old) she was sick in bed with a fever, and her parents had gone to mass, leaving the house locked up. Suddenly a neighbor, a widow named Marina Vela, appeared at her bed-side and, with threats of killing her, forced her to rise and dress and accompany her to a hermitage in the vicinage, where they found a tall, naked man, dark and with horns like a bull, who welcomed them and made them strip to their shifts, with an exchange of indecent kisses. Then they dressed and returned; although the house doors were locked they entered, and she was again in bed before her parents came back. Then followed long details of other similar adventures, in which the presiding demon usually wore the form of a goat. He made her renounce God and wrote with her blood her name on a paper; she was provided with an incubus demon whom she could summon by breaking a stick; with Marina she entered houses at night, killing children with powders or by sucking their fingers. There is no allusion to the aquelarre, but all other features of witchcraft are minutely detailed. By Marina's advice, she pretended to be possessed, and was taken to San Toribio de Liebara to be exorcised by Fray Gonzalo de San Millan, to whom she confessed. The inquisitors examined and cross-examined her closely, without her varying in her story; they sought, without success, for evidence of illusion or fantasy, but, on investigation it was found that she was really sick of a fever at Christmas, 1615, and that subsequently she seemed to tremble and be as one possessed. Confirmatory statements were procured from the frailes, and evidently in accordance with the instructions, all means were exhausted of testing her confession. In any other land this victim of hysteric auto-suggestion would have been, if not burnt, at least made an exhibition that would have spread the craze, but the tribunal, after carrying the case through the preliminary stages, voted to suspend it without rendering sentence and to reconcile and absolve her in the audience chamber without confiscation.[507] The same policy was followed in the few other cases brought before the tribunal. María de Melgar of Osorno, who died during trial, was given Christian burial in 1637; in 1640, it suspended the case of María Sanz of Trigueros, against whom there was testimony of witchcraft and, in 1641, it discharged with a reprimand María Alfonsa de la Torre, accused of killing cattle, although