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Let it not be forgotten that Hopkins was a factor in his day and that, however little he may have affected the larger issues of the times, he was affected by them. It was only the unusual conditions produced by the Civil Wars that made the great witchfinder possible. James Hopkins, Minister of Wenham, was buried at Mistley August 12, 1647."
"Is my hour already come?" said the wretched woman, raising her head so immediately as to show how far sleep was from her eyelids. "No, thou hast got an hour to enjoy the torments of thy own despair," laughed the witchfinder, with bitter irony. "Let me, then, be left in peace, and my last prayers be undisturbed," said Magdalena.
Some roads are quite shunned and deserted at night, for no other reason than that a ghost is supposed to haunt the place. The most tempting bribe would not make a native walk alone over that road after sunset. Besides the witchfinder, another important village functionary who relies much on muntras and charms, is the Huddick, or cow doctor.
And now with difficulty the soldiers forced a way through the throng for the approaching officer of justice; the great officiating dignitary of the town, who was to preside over the ceremony. He neared the town-hall, to order the unlocking of the prison-door, when the wretched witchfinder again sprang forward, crying, "Mercy! mercy! she is innocent. Hear me, noble Ober-Amtmann!"
So motionless was her form that for a moment the witchfinder thought she was dead, and had fallen together in the position in which she had knelt down; and the thought was like a knife in his revengeful heart, that she might thus have escaped the tortures prepared for her, and thwarted the gratification of his insane and hideous longings. A second thought suggested to him that she was sleeping.
"Karl!" repeated the witchfinder, clenching the bars with still firmer grasp, and raising himself with the effort to the full height of his stature, as though his limbs had on a sudden recovered all their strength "Karl! Ay, that was my name! How dost thou know it, woman?" "O God!" exclaimed the wretched tenant of the cell, "was my cup of bitterness not yet full? Hast thou reserved me this?"
Nor could I reveal the fact of my mysterious interview with him, or tell his name, without giving a clue to the truth of my own existence, and the discovery of all I had sworn so binding an oath ever to conceal. Thou sawest him also but, alas! with other thoughts." "Madman that I have been!" exclaimed the witchfinder. "Or is it now that I am mad? Am I not raving? Is not all this insane delusion?
"O God! make not this hour of trial too hard for me to bear!" exclaimed the unhappy woman; and then, raising her clasped hands to Claus in bitter expostulation, she cried, "Man! what have I done to harm thee, that thou shouldst heap these coals of fire on my soul?" "What thou hast done to harm me?" cried the witchfinder. "Hast thou not tormented my poor cripple limbs with thy infernal spells?
Bodinus highly praises the exertions of a witchfinder, named Nider, in France, who prosecuted so many that he could not calculate them.
During the colloquy between the cripple and the prisoner, they had been more than once disturbed by the loud tones of passionate exclamation that had burst from the former; but Hans had contrived to dispel his comrade's scruples as to what was going forward at the prison door, by making light of the matter. "Let them alone. They are only having a tuzzle together the witchfinder and the witch!
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