[The miller’s wife and the two grey cats.]

Once more, in Silesia they tell of a miller’s apprentice, a sturdy and industrious young fellow, who set out on his travels.  One day he came to a mill, and the miller told him that he wanted an apprentice but did not care to engage one, because hitherto all his apprentices had run away in the night, and when he came down in the morning the mill was at a stand.  However, he liked the looks of the young chap and took him into his pay.  But what the new apprentice heard about the mill and his predecessors was not encouraging; so the first night when it was his duty to watch in the mill he took care to provide himself with an axe and a prayer-book, and while he kept one eye on the whirring, humming wheels he kept the other on the good book, which he read by the flickering light of a candle set on a table.  So the hours at first passed quietly with nothing to disturb him but the monotonous drone and click of the machinery.  But on the stroke of twelve, as he was still reading with the axe lying on the table within reach, the door opened and in came two grey cats mewing, an old one and a young one.  They sat down opposite him, but it was easy to see that they did not like his wakefulness and the prayer-book and the axe.  Suddenly the old cat reached out a paw and made a grab at the axe, but the young chap was too quick for her and held it fast.  Then the young cat tried to do the same for the prayer-book, but the apprentice gripped it tight.  Thus balked, the two cats set up such a squalling that the young fellow could hardly say his prayers.  Just before one o’clock the younger cat sprang on the table and fetched a blow with her right paw at the candle to put it out.  But the apprentice struck at her with his axe and sliced the paw off, whereupon the two cats vanished with a frightful screech.  The apprentice wrapped the paw up in paper to shew it to his master.  Very glad the miller was next morning when he came down and found the mill going and the young chap at his post.  The apprentice told him what had happened in the night and gave him the parcel containing the cat’s paw.  But when the miller opened it, what was the astonishment of the two to find in it no cat’s paw but a woman’s hand!  At breakfast the miller’s young wife did not as usual take her place at the table.  She was ill in bed, and the doctor had to be called in to bind up her right arm, because in hewing wood, so they said, she had made a slip and cut off her own right hand.  But the apprentice packed up his traps and turned his back on that mill before the sun had set.[784]

[The analogy of were-wolves confirms the view that the reason for burning bewitched animals is either to burn the witch or to compel her to appear.]