sit at night upon the bed of one Cicely Balyer with whom she had grievously quarrelled.
This kind of visitation was not infrequent,—nor altogether surprising when one considers the nocturnal habits of cats, and the accessibility of cottage chimneys,—but the horror of it brought many an old wife to the scaffold. Janet Wishart and Alice Kyteler were both convicted of sending a "wantoune cat" to work evil upon such as had offended them; and a nameless English witch, hanged in King Jamie's reign, confessed that she wrought all her charms with the help of a dun-coloured cat, that came one night to her cottage when she was cowering over her fire, nursing angry thoughts against a farmer's wife. This beast dwelt with her for months, stealing forth night after night to obey her foul behests, until there was scarce a woman in the village who had not suffered from its malignity.
Apparently there was no piece of mischief too great or too trivial for an energetic and evilly disposed cat. The mere presence of Isobel Grierson's pussy in broad daylight would turn sound ale sour; and the most damning evidence brought against John Fian, a Scottish schoolmaster, strangled as a warlock in 1591, was that he had been seen by neighbours in hot pursuit of a cat, leaping over hedges and ditches like one with wings, so furious was the chase. When questioned as to why he
