THE WITCH JUDGE sat high; beside him his circuit fellow who was a nonentity; a step or two lower a row of local magistrates. The hall was large and high,—time-darkened, powdered with amber sunshine entering through narrow windows. The commission that had so zealously discharged its duties had a place of honour. The bishop was seated as high as the judge, around him those of the clergy who did not sit with the commission. The earl was away from the castle, but at an early moment in the proceedings there came in his kinsman, Sir Richard. One of the justices whispered to the nonentity-judge, who whispered to the Witch Judge. The Witch Judge stopped short in a foaming and thunderous speech and waited until the earl’s kinsman should be seated. His air recognized the importance of the entrance; he slightly inclined his enormous, grizzled head, then returned to his hurtling thunders. The jury sat in its place. Farmers and tradesmen, it sat a stolid twelve, and believed implicitly that one who said that there was truth in the Bible, and also that which was not truth must be hanged or burned. What else was there to do with him? It had as firm an assurance that your misbeliever was always your necromancer. Indeed, you exhibited and proved the wickedness of his unbelieving by the nauseous ill of his conduct. That was why examiners and commissions sought always until they found the thread that led to Satan’s visible ownership. As for the Hawthorn witches—the jury saw them hanging in a row, and purposed buying the ballads that would certainly be made. The hall was crowded. It was the most exciting kind of trial that could happen—barring only, perhaps, an occasional case of _lèse majesté_. But this was also _lèse majesté_. They all saw God as a King with a gold crown and throne and court; and Satan as a derision-covered rebel, and his imps and servants very ugly—when they were not at times very beautiful—and doom like a Traitor’s Gate, and hell a Tower from which there was never any coming forth.... And it was good to feel such loyal subjects, and to marvel and cry out, “Eh, sirs! To think of any thinking that!”... The hall was crowded, hot, and jostling. Young and old were here, full means and narrow means, lettered and unlettered, town and country,—for many walked each day from Hawthorn,—birth and the commonalty, they who held with the Episcopacy, and they who were turning Puritan, zealots and future sectaries, shepherds and sheep! And the neighbours of the accused—as many as could get here—and those who had sat with them in Hawthorn Church—and the witnesses and sufferers, fresh numbers of these being continually discovered. Now the hall held its breath while a witness was being questioned, or the counsel for the Crown spoke, or the Witch Judge thundered, and now it buzzed and hummed like the bees that they said were bewitched. Heat, many bodies in contact and a mist of breaths, an old, old contagion of opinion old as savagery....