Another rustic remarked in all seriousness that he did think wizards "ought to be encouraged, for they could tell a man many things he didn't know as would be useful to 'un." The belief in witchcraft is almost dead, but it is not so many years ago that it was firmly held. Thomas Hardy's tale, _The Withered Arm_, it will be recalled, is a story of witchcraft. Farmer Lodge brought home a young wife, Gertrude. A woman who worked on Lodge's farm, Rhoda Brook by name, had a son of which the farmer was the father. Rhoda naturally resented the marriage, and had a remarkable dream in which Gertrude, wrinkled and old, had sat on her chest and mocked her. She seized the apparition by the left arm and hurled it away from her. So life-like was the phantom of her brain that it was difficult for her to believe that she had not actually struggled with Gertrude Lodge in the flesh. Some time afterwards the farmer's wife complained that her left arm pained her, and the doctors were unable to give her any relief. In the end someone suggested that she had been "overlooked," and that it was the result of a witch's evil influence. She was told to ask the advice of a wise man named Conjurer Trendle who lived on Egdon Heath. In the days of our forefathers the conjurer was an important character in the village. He was resorted to by despairing lovers; he helped those who were under the evil eye to throw off the curse, and disclosed the whereabouts of stolen goods. His answers, too, were given with a somewhat mystic ambiguity. "Own horn eat own corn" would be the kind of reply a person would receive on consulting him about the disappearance of, say, a few little household articles. Well, to continue the story, Rhoda Brook accompanied Gertrude to the hut of Conjurer Trendle, who informed the farmer's wife that Rhoda had "overlooked" her. Trendle told her that the evil spell might be dissolved and a cure effected by laying the diseased arm on the neck of a newly hanged man. During the absence of her husband she arranged with the Casterbridge hangman to try this remedy. On the appointed day she arrived at the gaol, and the hangman placed her hand upon the neck of the body after the execution, and she drew away half fainting with the shock. As she turned she saw her husband and Rhoda Brook. The dead man was their son, who had been hanged for stealing sheep, and they harshly accused her of coming to gloat over their misfortune. At this the farmer's wife entirely collapsed, and only lived for a week or so after. Thomas Q. Couch, writing in _Notes and Queries_, 26th May 1855, gives a pleasant and light-hearted article on the prevailing belief in the existence of the piskies in the West Country: