of her husband's hair. She then asked for
the notes, saying she could not get on
without them. The wife hesitated a little,
but at length gave them. Sarah, after
putting a little of the husband's hair into
each note, and folding them up, made a
small bundle of them, which she put on
a chair. The wife, having some misgivings,
wanted the notes returned; but the
deceiver declared that the charm would fail
unless the notes remained a few minutes
in the chair. Sarah then told her silly dupe
to stand in the middle of the room, throw
pins into the fire, and watch till they were
consumed. While this was doing, the
knavish woman watched for an opportunity
to take up the roll of notes, and deposit in
its place a small paper parcel of similar size
and appearance. This, however, was not
so adroitly done as to escape the notice of
the wife; suspicion was aroused, the husband
was called up-stairs, the impostor was
searched, given into custody, tried, and
imprisoned. The cheat was of the most
vulgar kind, but it sufficed to show the
intense credulity of the person duped.

No longer ago than 1857, a trial at the
Stafford Assizes exhibited a farmer and his
wife in such a light as would appear almost
incredible, were it not that the narrative
came from their own lips. The farmer,
Thomas Charlesworth, lived at Rugby. He
married in 1856, against his mother's wish;
she quitted his roof, and gave him a
mysterious caution not to make cheese, as it
would be sure to crumble to pieces. This
warning seemed to imply that the young
wife would bewitch the dairy; but the
farmer's evidence did not tend to show
what he himself believed in this matter.
Very shortly, everything seemed to go
wrong; the cheese would not turn out
properly; the farmer, his wife, and the
dairymaid, all became unwell. In this
predicament he sought the advice of a
neighbouring toll-gate keeper, who
suggested that he should apply to a "wise
man," named James Tunnicliff. The
farmer and his wife started off, visited the
wise man, told their story, and obtained a
promise that he would come to the farm
on the following day. He did come. His
report startled the poor farmer. Mr. and
Mrs. Charlesworth, the maid, all the horses,
all the cows, the farm, and the cheese vat,
were pronounced to be bewitched. A
regular tariff was named for the disenchantment
—five shillings for each human being,
five shillings for each horse, three-and-sixpence
each cow, five shillings for the
cheese vat, &c.—until the poor dupe had
paid as much as seven pounds. No good
result followed; the cheese was no better
than before; and the inmates of the farm
were (or fancied themselves to be) very
much out of condition. They believed they
heard at night strange noises, the bellowing
of cattle and the howling of dogs. Tunnicliff
now asserted that the whole commotion
was due to the influence of Charlesworth's
mother over certain wizards living at Longton,
Burton-on-Trent, and Derby; and that
to counteract this baneful influence a large
outlay of money would be needed. The
farmer gave him an additional sum of thirty
pounds. Still, there was no improvement.
And now occurred the strangest proof of
deception on the one hand, and
credulity on the other. The farmer took
the knave Tunnicliff into his house, and
allowed him to live there, eleven months!
The rogue lived an easy life, and fed on
the best that the farm afforded. Sometimes
he would make crosses on all the
doors with witch hazel; and sometimes he
would burn blue lights, to overcome the
powers of the evil one. The farmer deposed
in evidence, that one night he was taken ill;
that he heard a sound like that of a
carriage in the yard, and another like a rush
of wind through a passage; that the house-dog
entered the room, followed by "the
shape of another dog all on fire;" that after
the farmer had said the Lord's Prayer, the
fiery dog disappeared, but the house-dog
stayed, with his tongue hanging out and
his paws hanging down. The mistress and
the maid had both of them something to say
concerning this fiery dog. After this
extraordinary hallucination had continued nearly
a year, even the obtuse mind of the farmer
began to open to the possibility that the
wise man had been making a dupe of him.
He consulted a lawyer, and the lawyer
collected evidence sufficient to bring upon
Tunnicliff a sentence of twelve months'
imprisonment with hard labour, "for
obtaining money under false pretences." But
the evidence was not sufficient to show
how far, or in what way, he had produced
the appearances and the noises which had
so much assisted to keep up the cheat.

The obstinate milk of a cow was the
primary cause of this absurd exhibition of
ignorance; and such an event has not
unfrequently led to applications to fortune-tellers
and wise men. Early in the present
century there was a case in point, ludicrous
in its commencement but tragical at its
close. A cow belonging to a tailor ceased to
yield milk, and the tailor's wife believed that
the animal was bewitched. She assembled