Nor is the marvel in the absolute belief of the people in witchcraft only two centuries ago: what could they do but believe, when the witches and sorcerers themselves, before their execution, often avowed their guilt and told how they had laid themselves out to league with the evil spirit; how they had gone through a regular process of initiation in the black art; how they had been rebaptized with the support of regular witch-sponsors; how they had abjured Christ, and had entered, to the best of their belief, into a compact with the Devil, and had commenced accordingly a suitable course of bad works, poisoning and bewitching men and cattle, and the like? Nor is the wonder in the unfairness with which those accused of witchcraft were treated. So 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 witchbroth. 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. 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; for the people had fits of frenzied terror, which required to be allayed by the sacrifice of a victim or two, and Justice became confused: to be sure, in those days her head was never very clear, and threw by mistake the odium of the crime into the accusing scale; the other flew up significantly of the full extent to which mercy could interfere to temper the law. A curious instance of an epidemic attack of the belief in witchcraft occurred at Salzburg between the years 1627 and 1629, originating in a sickness among the cattle in the neighbourhood. The sickness was unluckily attributed to witchcraft, and an active inquiry was set on foot to detect the participators in the crime. It was very successful; for we find in the list of persons burned alive on this occasion, besides children of 14, 12, 11, 10, 9 years of age, fourteen canons, four gentlemen of the choir, two young men of rank, a fat old lady of rank, the wife of a burgomaster, a counsellor, the fattest burgess of Würtzburg, together with his wife, the handsomest woman in the city, and a midwife of the name of Shiekelte, with whom (according to a N. B. in the original report) the whole of the mischief originated.