further proof that when the grand jury returned a true bill, "billa vera," against them, old father Samuel burst out passionately to her with, "A plague of God light on thee, for thou art she that has brought us all to this, and we may thank thee for it." So the judge, "after good divine counsel given to them, proceeded to Judgment, which was to death." But the poor old woman set up a plea of being with child, though she was near fourscore years of age; at which all the court laughed, and she herself most of all, thinking it might save her. Some one standing near to Agnes counselled her to try the like plea; but the brave young girl, who had something of her father's spirit in her, indignantly refused. "No," said Agnes, with the gallows straight before her, and this desperate plea perhaps able to save her--"no; it shall never be said that I was both Witch and ----." She died with the same haughty courage maintained to the last: but old mother Samuel maundered through a vast number of confessions--implicated her husband--confessed to her spirits--but with one affecting touch of nature, through all her drivel and imbecility steadily refused to criminate her daughter. No, her Nan was no witch; she was clear and pure before God and towards man; and neither force nor cajolery could make her forswear that bit of loving truth. When those three helpless wretches were fairly dead, the children, upon whose young souls lay the ineffaceable stain of Murder, and whose first steps in life had been through innocent blood, gave up the game and pronounced themselves cured: so we hear no more of their fits or their spirits, or Mrs. Joan's ghostly lovers fighting with cowl staves and breaking each other's heads out of jealousy and revenge: and the last record of the case is, that Sir Henry Cromwell left an annual sum of forty shillings to provide for a yearly sermon against witchcraft, to be preached at Huntingdon by a B.D. or D.D. member of Queen's College, Cambridge. How terrible to think that three human lives were sacrificed for such wild and wilful nonsense, and that sane and thoughtful and noble-minded people of this present day walk on the way towards the same faith! Better by far the most chill and desolate scepticism, which at least will light no Smithfield fires for any forms of creed or monstrous imaginings of superstition, than beliefs which can only be expressed and maintained by blood, and the culmination of which is in the suffering and destruction of all dissentients. THE MAN OF HOPE AND THE DEVIL.[108]