answer for their ill-doing. With all the vast machinery of Hell to back them, they could neither outwit nor outstrip the clumsy pursuit of man. A rare exception to this rule was the case of a baker's wife in Köln, who cruelly bewitched her husband's little apprentice. When accused of the crime, she manifested the unconcern of one who had nothing to fear; and neither threats nor exhortations could move her to repentance. She was sentenced to the stake; but, to the end, defied the judge, laughed at the executioner, and mocked the priest with appalling blasphemies. The fagots were fired, the smoke enveloped her thickly, the priest lifted his voice in prayer,—when, with a wild exultant screech, there leaped from out the flames a black cat, which disappeared in a trice amid the terrified throng. The witch had escaped; but one trembles to think what suspicion must have fallen for a time on all the black pussies of Köhn.
Perhaps, however, it was impossible to enhance the guilt of an animal already credited with such frightful depths of malignity. The very word Grimalkin, or Greymalkin, which now we use so lightly, was the name of a fiend, and bore a fearful significance in the annals of witchcraft.
"Now I go, now I fly,
Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I,"
sings Hecate in Middleton's fantastic play. A still
