white powders, which he scatters carefully, one at every gate on his farm, and his men hear him as he goes muttering in solemn fashion some strange set words, which turn out, when the scroll is submitted to the schoolmaster afterwards, to contain the blessings of the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, copied in writing for his use. He has paid a visit, it appears, to a distant town, and been closeted with a well-known public character of the west, popularly called the White Witch, and it is he who has not only exposed the name and arts of the parish practitioner of evil, but has supplied an antidote in the shape of baffling powders and “charms of might.” Some years agone a violent thunderstorm passed over the hamlet of Holacombe, and wrought great damage in its course. Trees were rooted up, cattle killed, and a rick or two set on fire. It so befell that I visited, the day after, one of the chief agricultural inhabitants of the village, and I found the farmer and his men standing by a ditch wherein lay, heels upward, a fine young horse quite dead. “Here sir,” he shouted, as I came on, “only please to look! is not this a sight to see?” I looked at the poor animal, and uttered my sympathy and regret at the loss. “One of the fearful results,” I happened to say, “of the storm and lightning yesterday.” “There, Jem,” said he to one of his men, triumphantly, “didn’t I say the parson would find it out? Yes, sir,” he said, “it is as you say: it is all that wretched old Cherry[146] Parnell’s doing, with her vengeance and her noise!” I stared with astonishment at this unlooked-for interpretation which he had put into my mouth, and waited for him to explain. “You see, sir,” he went on to say, “the case was this: old Cherry came up to my place, tottering along and mumbling that she wanted a fagot of wood. I said to her, ‘Cherry,’ says I, ‘I gave you one only two days agone, and another two days before that, and I must say that I didn’t make up my woodrick altogether for you.’ So she turned away, looking very grany, and muttering something about ‘Hotter for me hereafter.’ Well, sir, last night I was in bed, I and my wife, and all to once there bursted a thunderbolt, and shaked the very room and house. Up we started, and my wife says, ‘O father, old Cherry’s up! I wish I had gone after her with that there fagot.’ I confess I thought in my mind I wish she had; but it was too late then, and I would try to hope for the best. But now, sir, you see with your own eyes what that revengeful old woman hath been and done. And I do think, sir,” he went on to say, changing his tone to a kind of indignant growl--“I _do_ think that when I call to mind how I’ve paid tithe and rates faithfully all these years, and kept my place in church before your reverence every Sabbath-day, and always voted in the vestries that what hath a be ought to be, and so on, I do think that such ones as old Cherry Parnell never ought to be allowed to