eyes were dry and they did not cry any more, but only sat and mumbled, and would not take the food.  Then one of them confessed, and said they had often ridden through the air on broomsticks to the witches’ Sabbath, and in a bleak place high up in the mountains had danced and drunk and caroused with several hundred other witches and the Evil One, and all had conducted themselves in a scandalous way and had reviled the priests and blasphemed God.  That is what she said—­not in narrative form, for she was not able to remember any of the details without having them called to her mind one after the other; but the commission did that, for they knew just what questions to ask, they being all written down for the use of witch-commissioners two centuries before.  They asked, “Did you do so and so?” and she always said yes, and looked weary and tired, and took no interest in it.  And so when the other ten heard that this one confessed, they confessed, too, and answered yes to the questions.  Then they were burned at the stake all together, which was just and right; and everybody went from all the countryside to see it.  I went, too; but when I saw that one of them was a bonny, sweet girl I used to play with, and looked so pitiful there chained to the stake, and her mother crying over her and devouring her with kisses and clinging around her neck, and saying, “Oh, my God!  Oh, my God!” it was too dreadful, and I went away.

It was bitter cold weather when Gottfried’s grandmother was burned.  It was charged that she had cured bad headaches by kneading the person’s head and neck with her fingers—­as she said—­but really by the Devil’s help, as everybody knew.  They were going to examine her, but she stopped them, and confessed straight off that her power was from the Devil.  So they appointed to burn her next morning, early, in our market-square.  The officer who was to prepare the fire was there first, and prepared it.  She was there next—­brought by the constables, who left her and went to fetch another witch.  Her family did not come with her.  They might be reviled, maybe stoned, if the people were excited.  I came, and gave her an apple.  She was squatting at the fire, warming herself and waiting; and her old lips and hands were blue with the cold.  A stranger came next.  He was a traveler, passing through; and he spoke to her gently, and, seeing nobody but me there to hear, said he was sorry for her.  And he asked if what she confessed was true, and she said no.  He looked surprised and still more sorry then, and asked her: 

“Then why did you confess?”

“I am old and very poor,” she said, “and I work for my living.  There was no way but to confess.  If I hadn’t they might have set me free.  That would ruin me, for no one would forget that I had been suspected of being a witch, and so I would get no more work, and wherever I went they would set the dogs on me.  In a little while I would starve.  The fire is best; it is soon over.  You have been good to me, you two, and I thank you.”