"O dear! O dear! I am afraid for my life and the lives of my poor children; and even the very stones out of which this dismal city is built inspire me with dread and horror," said poor Thieng, ruefully; "and do you know?" she added,—her eyes growing rounder and rounder every moment, as the awfulness of the situation presented itself to her mind,—"his Majesty has shut himself up in his topmost chamber, and guards are set at all the doors and windows, lest any suspicious-looking person should enter, and no one but only the old lady-physician, Khoon Maw Prang, is allowed to see him to serve his meals, and he won't come down till the palace and whole city has been exorcised. And there will be no school to-morrow," she continued, growing more and more communicative, "for he has ordered all the royal children to be shut up in their homes until noon, when the old devil shall have been driven out by the priests of Brahma; and the priests of Buddha will then purify the city with burning incense and sprinkling the houses, walls, and all its inhabitants with holy water."
Up to the last moment a natural cause for the disappearance of the Princess Sunartha Vismita never even presented itself to the mind of my simple-hearted friend, and I was not a little comforted, for the sake of the strange Laotian woman, to find that it was thought so absolutely the work of some supernatural agent. For Thieng also told me that the court astrologers and wizards were trying to unravel the mystery; that large rewards had been promised to them if they could throw any light on the subject; and, lastly, that the two Laotian captives, with the deaf and dumb changeling, were to be exorcised and examined in the ecclesiastical court on the following day by the "wise" men and women in the country.
After which the poor unhappy lady laid her head down upon her pillow, utterly grieved and terrified by her fears. I tried in vain to comfort her. But what between her dread of the supernatural and her misgivings that to-morrow the chances were that certain accusations against herself and me, as secret agents of some devilish sorceress, might be brought forward with unanswerable logic, she was quite inconsolable and greatly to be pitied.
I believe she would have been content to give her life, ere day broke, only to catch a glimpse of the poor unfortunate princess whom the demon had thus maliciously kidnapped and carried off.
The only thing I could say, that seemed in the slightest degree to soothe her, was that I would endeavor to be present at the ecclesiastical court at the time appointed for the exorcism, and obtain such intelligence of its proceedings, and the facts elicited during the trial, as my imperfect knowledge of the technical language and formalities of the Siamese courts would enable me to gather for her.
WITCHCRAFT IN SIAM IN EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX, COMPARED WITH WITCHCRAFT IN ENGLAND IN SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN.
It might be difficult, at the present time, anywhere in any enlightened Christian community, to find persons of the most ordinary intelligence who entertain the smallest faith in witchcraft.