In the good old days when that royal pipsqueak, our FIRST JAMES, came to the throne, if you were a physician of a little more than common skill and furnished with theological opinions of a modernist complexion, or a lonely woman with (or without) some cunning in the matter of herbs, who cherished a peculiar (or normal) pussy-cat, you were quite likely to be burnt out of hand. And, in her competent way, MARY JOHNSTON, in _The Witch_ (CONSTABLE), deals with this dark blot on the escutcheon of Christianity. Through what suffering and what joys _Dr. Aderhold_, the kindly free-thinking mystic, and _Joan Heron_, the simple village maid, found their ultimate and, for the times, merciful release by halter in place of fire, readers who have nerves to spare for horror will read with eagerness. It is indeed a dreadful story. Miss JOHNSTON is not one of your novelists who lets herself off the contemporary document, and on her reputation you may take it she is not far out. The grim tale serves to show to what lengths the force of suggestion will, in times of excitement, carry folk otherwise sober and truthful. Manifestly preposterous evidence, freely given, was freely admitted by trained legal minds--evidence on which innocent lives were sacrificed at the average rate of over a thousand a month in England and Scotland in the two centuries of the chief witch-baiting period. But, after all, have we not, most of us, near relations who saw a quarter-of-a-million of astrakanned Russians steal through England in the dead of an August night? And have we not---- But I grow tedious. _The Witch_ is an eminently readable story of adventure of the coincidental kind. * * *