At Lindheim, Horst reports, on one occasion six women were implicated in a charge of having disinterred the body of a child to make a witch-broth. As they happened to be innocent of the deed, they underwent the most cruel tortures before they would confess it. At length they saw their cheapest bargain was to admit the crime, and be simply burned alive and have it over. So they did so. But the husband of one of them procured an official examination of the grave; when the child's body was found in its coffin safe and sound. What said the Inquisitor? "This is indeed a proper piece of devil's work; no, no, I am not to be taken in by such a gross and obvious imposture. Luckily the women have already confessed the crime, and burned they must and shall be in honour of the Holy Trinity, which has commanded the extirpation of sorcerers and witches." The six women were burned alive accordingly. It was hard upon them, because they were innocent. But the regular witches, as times went, hardly deserved any better fate--considering, I mean, their honest and straight-forward intentions of doing that which they believed to be the most desperate wrong achievable. Many there were who sought to be initiated in the black art. They were re-baptized with the support of responsible witch sponsors, abjured Christ, and entered to the best of their belief into a compact with the devil; and forthwith commenced a course of bad works, poisoning and bewitching men and cattle, and the like, or trying to do so. One feature transpired in these details, that is merely pathetic, not horrifying or disgusting. The little children of course talked witchcraft, and you may fancy, Archy, what charming gossip it must have made. Then the poor little things were sadly wrought on by the tales they told. And they fell into trances and had visions shaped by their heated fancies. A little maid, of twelve years of age, used to fall into fits of sleep, and afterwards she told her parents, and _the judge_, how an old woman and her daughter, riding on a broom-stick, had come and taken her out with them. The daughter sat foremost, the old woman behind, the little maid between them. They went away through the roof of the house, over the adjoining houses and the town gate, to a village some way off. There they went down a chimney of a cottage into a room, where sat a tall black man and twelve women. They eat and drank. The black man filled their glasses from a can, and gave each of the women a handful of gold. She herself had received none; but she had eaten and drank with them.