From the above it is evident that the natural tendency of wool and feathers to felt and clog together, has been distorted, by widely different peoples, into an outward and visible sign that occult and malignant influences were at work. * * * * * As to the manner in which wizards and witches were put to the question in Guernsey--that is tortured until they confessed whatever was required of them--Mr. Warburton, a herald and celebrated antiquary who wrote in the reign of Charles II., has given a circumstancial account, the correctness of which may be relied on. His _Treatise on the History, Laws and Customs of the Island of Guernsey_, bears the date of 1682, and at page 126 he says:-- By the law approved (_Terrien_, Lib. xii. cap. 37), torture is to be used, though not upon slight presumption, yet where the presumptive proof is strong, and much more when the proof is positive, and there wants only the confession of the party accused. Yet this practice of torturing does not appear to have been used in the island for some ages, except in the case of witches, when it was too frequently applied, near a century since. The custom then was, when any person was supposed guilty of sorcery or witchcraft, they carried them to a place in the town called _La Tour Beauregard_, and there, tying their hands behind them by the two thumbs, drew them to a certain height with an engine made for that purpose, by which means sometimes their shoulders were turned round; and sometimes their thumbs torn off; but this fancy of witches has for some years been laid aside. It will be noticed in the subsequent _Confessions_ of witches (page 11, &c.), that a number of colons (:) are inserted in the text where they would not be required as ordinary marks of punctuation. These correspond, however, to similar pauses in the original records, and evidently indicate the successive stages by which the story was wrung from the wretched victims. They are thus endowed with a sad and ghastly significance, which must be borne in mind when the confessions are read. It must also be remembered that these confessions were not usually made in the connected form in which they stand recorded, but were rather the result of leading questions put by the inquisitors, such as: How old were you when the Devil first appeared to you? What form did he assume? What parish were you in? What were you doing? &c., &c.