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168 skull and bones cross-ways. Then the old man told George what he was to do. On the stroke of eleven, he was to begin casting the balls, in number sixty and three, neither more nor less; one over or one under, as soon as twelve o’clock struck, he was a lost man. And, during all this work, he was not to speak a word, nor to step out of the circle, let what would happen. Sixty of the balls were to carry true, and only three were to miss. Well sure enough, Smith began casting the balls; but such shocking and hideous apparitions flocked about him, that at last, he shrieked out and jumped right out of the circle: instantly he fell down senseless to the ground, and never recovered his recollection till he found himself at Prague, as if waking out of a dream, in the hands of the surgeon, and with a clergyman by his side.”

“God preserve all christian people from such snares of Satan,” said the forester’s wife, crossing herself.

“Had George then,” asked Rudolph, “made a regular contract with the devil?”

“Why that’s more than I’ll undertake to