The Witch Judge half rose, puffed himself forth, became more than ever a bolt-darting Jupiter. Trials for heresy, apostasy, blasphemy were not in themselves wholly his element. But let them darken and lower—as indeed, they almost always did darken and lower—into questions of actual physical contact and trade dealings with the Hereditary Foe, then he was in his element!... Wizards and witches! The Witch Judge shook his hand above the prisoners. “And let not any think Witchcraft to be other or less than Apostasy, Idolatry, and Blasphemy! If Apostasy is the Devil’s right hand, Witchcraft makes his left—his left? Nay, his right and most powerful, for here is your apostate in action—here is your unbeliever upon his Lord Satan’s business!” Witchcraft! Witchcraft! The Witch Judge paced around, threw lurid lights upon the crime he battened on. His tribute of huge words rolled beneath the groined roof and shook the hearts of the fearful. There came back from the crowd a sighing and muttering, half-ecstatic, half-terrified, low sound. The word of God—the command of the Most High, taken from his own lips—the plainest order of the King of Kings.—_Thou shall not suffer a witch to live_.... Statute of the first year of our present Gracious Sovereign, our lord, King James—_All persons invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit, or taking up dead bodies from their graves to be used in any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or killing or otherwise hurting any person by such infernal arts, are declared guilty of felony without benefit of clergy and shall suffer death._ He had a way of uttering “death” that made the word a distillation of all the suffering man could make for man. Preliminary thunders from the Witch Judge ceased. Counsel for the Crown came afterwards like a whistling wind. The long Hawthorn Witch Trial began, and stretched from midsummer day to day. To many it afforded an exciting, day-by-day renewed entertainment; to some it was a fearful dream; to a very few, perhaps, it seemed a long, dull, painful watch by mortality’s fever bed. Once Aderhold caught the gaze of the earl’s kinsman upon him. The eyes of the two met and agreed as to what was passing, then Aderhold looked away. The prisoners had their appointed space. At times they were all brought together here; at times the greater number were withdrawn, leaving one or two to be examined separately or together. The heat and the light struck against them, and the waves of sound; from one side came the booming of the judge’s voice or the dry shrilling of the king’s lawyer; from the other the whisper of the crowd that meant to have witch blood. There were Aderhold, the youth to whom he had given books, the boy of sixteen, old Dorothy’s nephew, Dorothy herself, a halfwitted woman from a hut between the Grange and the North-End Farm, Grace Maybank, Mother Spuraway, and Joan Heron—eight in all.