Madam cleared her voice—“Why, I happened to be in the kitchen yesterday, just before tea-time, when Dinah came over to borrow half a pint of meal to make some porridge for Nanny, so I asked Dinah what was the matter with her? for you know that nobody takes porridge but when they are sick, and not then, if they can afford a little posset, or even oatmeal gruel with raisins in it. Dinah said, she was sure she did not know what ailed her, but she was so nervous and cross there was no living in the house with her. I reproved Dinah for talking so of her mistress, and after she was gone I told Vi’let to make some nice sack-posset, and carry it over to Nanny; you know, with all their money, they scarcely afford themselves the necessaries of life. Vi’let grumbled enough, and said ‘water porridge was good enough for witches, and too good, too;’ however, she went to get the skillet to boil the milk in, and when she came back with it in her hand, what should slip in between her feet but a monstrous great black cat. Old Tabby always fights all strange cats, but when she saw this, she slunk away, and hid herself behind the settle. Vi’let was going to strike the strange cat over with the skillet, but I would not let her—not bethinking myself that it was any thing more than a common cat—though it was the biggest one I ever saw—but it seemed to be nothing more than skin and bone, and it rubbed up against me and mewed so pitifully, that I told Vi’let not to hurt the creature, but to give it something to eat. Vi’let said she wasn’t going to do no such thing; and if I wanted to give Christian folks’ vittles to evil sperits I might get it myself. Then she tried to strike it again; when the creature, or whatever it was, hunched up its back and spit at her; and then it set up an awful yowl and disappeared. I thought I saw it go out after Dinah; but Vi’let said it banished up chimney; and she was sure Nanny sent it to bewitch us all. And this morning she says she was pinched black-and-blue all night, so that she couldn’t sleep a wink, and took three crooked pins out of her sleeve, which she was sure she never put there, for she has only two, and one of them hasn’t any head. She showed me her arm that was pinched so; it was certainly very much swollen, though I couldn’t see any black-and-blue marks for the color of her skin. I am pretty sure _I_ felt some twitches, too, in my right arm; and this morning I had the strangest cramp in my foot. I wet my finger and crossed the place, and the cramp went off; but I feel all the time as if it was coming on again. Now what do you think of all this, Mr. Fayerweather? Don’t you think it high time Nanny was seen to?” Mr. F. looked comical. “Now what are you laughing at?” said madam, in an unwonted pet; “I’ll never tell you any thing again, if Nanny bewitches us all together, which it’s likely enough she’ll do, now we have the land against her will.”