"What must have been his feelings on whom the evil eye had
glared,--against whom the spell had been pronounced; on whom misfortunes
came thick and fast, by flood and field, at home and abroad, in business
and in pleasure; whose cattle died, whose crops were blighted, and about
whose bed and board, invisible, unwelcome, and mischievous guests held
their revels; who saw not in his calamities the results of ignorance and
error, to be averted by caution, nor the inflictions of Heaven to be
borne with resignation, but was the victim of a compact, in which his
disasters were part of the price paid by the powers of darkness for an
immortal soul! He who pined in consumption supposed that his own waxen
effigy was revolving and melting at the charmed fire; the changes of his
sensations told him when wanton cruelty damped the flame, to waste it
lingeringly, or roused it in the impatience of revenge: and when came
those sharp and shooting pains, the hags were thrusting in their
bodkins, and their laugh rang in his ears: they sat upon his breast
asleep,--he awoke gasping, and, as he started up, he saw them melting
into air.
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