throw into the fire a shred of his cloak which he had dropped in her house.​[754] In Prussia they say that if you cannot catch a thief, the next best thing you can do is to get hold of a garment which he may have shed in his flight; for it {p207} you beat it soundly, the thief will fall sick. This belief is firmly rooted in the popular mind. Some seventy or eighty years ago, in the neighbourhood of Berend, a man was detected trying to steal honey, and fled, leaving his coat behind him. When he heard that the enraged owner of the honey was mauling his lost coat, he was so alarmed that he took to his bed and died.​[755] But in Germany it is not every stick that is good enough to beat an absent man with. It should be a hazel rod cut before sunrise on Good Friday. Some say it should be a one-year-old hazel-sapling, and that you should cut it with three strokes, looking to the east, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Others think the best time for cutting the rod is at the new moon on a Tuesday morning before sunrise. Once you have got this valuable instrument, you have only to spread a garment on a mole-hill or on the threshold, and to lay on with hearty goodwill, mentioning the name of the person whom you desire to injure. Though he may be miles off, he will feel every whack as if it descended on his body.​[756] [Sidenote: Contagious magic may be wrought on a man through the impressions left by his body in sand or earth, particularly through his footprints. Contagious magic of footprints.]