sword, and slaying all the ghosts that came in my way, lighted at last on the place where my mistress was:  I entered the first door; my eyes were sunk in my head, the sweat ran off me by more streams than one, and I was just breathing my last, without thought of recovery; when my Melissa coming up to me, began to wonder why I’d be walking so late; and ‘if,’ said she, ’you had come a little sooner, you might have done us a kindness; for a wolf came into the farm, and has made butchers work enough among the cattle; but tho’ he got off, he has no reason to laugh, for a servant of ours ran him through the neck with a pitchfork.’  As soon as I heard her, I could not hold open my eyes any longer, and ran home by daylight, like a vintner whose house had been robb’d:  But coming by the place where the cloaths were turned to stone, I saw nothing but a puddle of blood; and when I got home, found mine host lying a-bed like an oxe in his stall, and a chirurgeon dressing his neck.  I understood afterwards he was a fellow that could change his skin; but from that day forward, could never eat a bit of bread with him, no, if you’d have kill’d me.  Let them that don’t believe me, examine the truth of it; may your good angels plague me as I tell ye a lye.”

The company were all wondring, when, “Saving what you have said,” quoth Trimalchio, “if there be faith in man, my hair stands on end, because I know Niceros is no trifler; he’s sure of what he says, and not given to talking:  Nay, I’ll tell ye as horrible a thing my self; but see there, what’s that behind the hangings?

“When I was yet a long-hair’d boy, for even then I liv’d a pleasant life, I had a minion, and he dy’d:  He was (so help me Hercules) a pearl, a paragon, nay perfection it self:  But when the poor mother lamented him, and we also were doing the same, some witches got round the house on a sudden, you’d have taken them for hounds hunting a hare.  We had then in the house a Cappadocian, a tall fellow, stout and hardy, that would not have stept an inch out of his way for Jupiter.  He boldly drew his sword, and wrapping his coat about his left arm, leaped out of the house, and as it might be here, (no hurt to the thing I touch) ran a woman clean through.  We heard a pitiful groan, but not to lye, saw none of them.  Our champion came in and threw himself on a bed, but all black and blue, so he had been trosh’d with flails; for it seems some ill hand had touched him.  We shut the door, and went on with our mourning; but the mother taking her son in her arms, and stroaking him, found nothing but a bolster of straw; it had neither heart, entrals, nor any thing, for the fairies belike had stollen him out of his cradle, and left that of straw instead of him.  Give me credit, I beseech ye, women are craftier than we are, play their tricks by night, and turn every thing topsy-turvy.  After this our tall fellow never came to his colour again, but in a few days died raving-mad.”