392 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In a little cottage on a much-traveled thoroughfare one woman 

 admitted to me with bated breath, as though not quite sure her tor- 

 mentor was dead, that she had been bewitched. Her account was 

 given in these words : 



" I kep' seein' an old woman with a cow's hoof in her hand ; 

 sometimes she was by my side an' sometimes she was there on the 

 wall. At last she come up close to me, an' she was goin' to clap 

 the cow's hoof over my mouth, but I slapped at her right hard an' 

 she went away. She ain't never come again. Yes, I know I was 

 bewitched." 



A cow's hoof is a frequent accessory, and animals that are brought 

 into the magic circle are always of a domestic character, completely 

 subservient to the power of the witch. 



It is noticeable that the exercise of witchcraft is generally 

 ascribed to women; and that of witch mastery, the superior attribute, 

 to men. 



The form of a judicial process found favor with the Puritan tem- 

 perament in old Salem, although by a grim mockery the verdict was 

 decided in advance. The independent mountaineer likes to take the 

 law in his own hands, as the following story illustrates : 



" A farmer believed a woman was bewitching his stock. He 

 drew a picture of her and set it up as a target; then he sunk a piece 

 of silver in his bullet with an awl, that being the charm for shoot- 

 ing a witch. He aimed to shoot the picture through the heart, 

 but fired a little too low. On that very day the woman herself 

 fell flat on the ground, and a deep, awful hole was found in her 

 side. From that minute she suffered extreme agony, and died in 

 a week." 



The narrator had heard this grewsome tale from his grandmother, 

 who said that she had seen the hole. 



One of the oldest inhabitants of Monroe County is responsible 

 for the ensuing chronicle; he dates it in the " forties " of the present 

 century : 



" 'Tain't so very long ago there was a woman livin' near the 

 Sweet Springs who used to be always seen with a cap and bonnet 

 on; nobody ever saw her without the cap. She was a hard, grim- 

 lookin' monster. If anybody was watchin' to see her ontie her cap 

 strings, somehow they never could see any more until the clean cap 

 was on now that's so, there ain't any mistake about that! When 

 she come over here from Botetourt County the report followed her 

 that she lived pretty close to a man whose chillun went to school, an' 

 a calf had been in the habit of attackin' 'em an' bitin' em. The 

 father concealed himself one day and was watchin' to catch the 

 calf. On that occasion it come out an' attacked the chillun on a 



