to wait until she has settled the destiny or cured the ills of some client from a distant village. But having overcome all difficulties, you may count upon a not unamiable reception from a stout, elderly woman with a good-humoured eye and a plentiful crop of glossy black hair turning slightly to grey. She will not be at all puffed up by her powers or position, and she will be quite ready to accept any little token of appreciative regard you may be inclined to press upon her; but, to be quite candid, I doubt if you will leave her apartment knowing much more of witchcraft after the modern Italian convention than when you entered it. This partly from a certain diffidence on her part to give away trade secrets, but still more because Emilia's Italian is several shades worse than your own, so that unless you are an amateur in Tuscan also, you will find her altogether unintelligible. Only, if you should prove able to interchange ideas, you must by all means ask her about the Old Religion, how far it still prevails among the Apennines, what are its gods, and what their powers. If, further, you ask her opinion as to the magical powers of certain Christian saints, and especially of Saint Anthony, you will be amply repaid, supposing you to be interested in such matters, for all the trouble you and your nose have been put to in discovering Emilia's abiding-place. My acquaintance with Emilia commenced in a certain hill-top village within easy walking distance of Florence. I was there honoured by some slight intimacy with a worthy contadine who had one fair daughter, by name Zita. Having a lustrous eye, a praiseworthy figure, and a neat ankle, she had also a sufficiency of admirers, whose fervour was not the less that she was generally regarded as likely to receive an acceptable marriage-portion, as such things go thereabouts. Nor was Zita at all averse to admiration, accepting all that was offered with admirable resignation. Had Zita happened to be the only young woman in the village desirous of admiration I might never have become acquainted with Emilia. As things were, Zita was one day attacked by an illness and took to her bed. There was no apparent cause, and dark whispers began to go abroad of jealousies, witchcraft, and what not. Their justice was proved within three days by the discovery, in Zita's bed, of an ear of grass, two hen's feathers, and a twig tied together by a strand of horsehair. The whole had been neatly tucked away beneath the mattress, where it might have remained undiscovered in a less cleanly household than was the Morettis'. Doubt was at an end--obviously Zita was bewitched, and the worst must be feared unless the spell could be expeditiously removed.