appearance, and peculiarities, might seem to the prejudiced neighbourhood in the Forest to render them not unsuitable depositaries.  In both, perhaps, some vindictive wish, which appeared to have been gratified nearly as soon as uttered, or some one of those curious coincidences which no individual’s life is without, led to an impression which time, habit, and general recognition would gradually deepen into full conviction, that each really possessed the powers which witchcraft was believed to confer.  Whether it be with witches as it is said to be with a much maligned branch of a certain profession, that it needs two of its members in a district to make its exercise profitable, it is not for me to say; but it is seldom found that competition is accompanied by any very amicable feeling in the competitors, or by a disposition to underrate the value of the merchandize which each has to offer for sale.  Accordingly, great was the rivalry, constant the feuds, and unintermitting the respective criminations of the Erictho and Canidia of Pendle,[33] who had opened shops for the vending of similar contraband commodities, and were called upon to decry each other’s stock, as well as to magnify their own.  Each “gave her little senate laws,” and had her own party (or tail, according to modern phraseology) in the Forest.  Some looked up to and patronized one, and some the other.  If old Demdike could boast that she had Tibb as a familiar, old Chattox was not without her Fancy.  If the former had skill in waxen images, the latter could dig up the scalps of the dead, and make their teeth serviceable to her unhallowed purposes.  In the anxiety which each felt to outvie the other, and to secure the greater share of the general custom of a not very extended or very lucrative market, each would wish to be represented as more death-dealing, destructive, and powerful than her neighbour; and she who could number up the most goodly assortment of damage done to man and beast, whether real or not was quite immaterial, as long as the draught was spiced and flavoured to suit the general taste, stood the best chance of obtaining a monopoly.  It is a curious fact, that the son-in-law of one of these two individuals, and whose wife was herself executed as a witch, paid to the other a yearly rent,[34] on an express covenant that she should exempt him from her charms and witchcrafts.  Where the possession of a commission from the powers of darkness was thus eagerly and ostentatiously paraded, every death, the cause of which was not perfectly obvious, whether it ended in a sudden termination or a slow and gradual decline, would be placed to the general account of one of the two (to use Master Potts’s description,) “agents for the devil in those parts,” as the party responsible for these unclaimed dividends of mortality.  Did a cow go mad, or was a horse unaccountably afflicted with the staggers, the same solution was always at hand to clear negligence and save the trouble of inquiry; and so far from modestly