text:  The principal personages concerned in the awful question at issue occupied thus their respective positions in the old town-hall; when after a long and troubled pause during which silence was with difficulty obtained among the more tumultuous portion of the crowd at the lower end of the hall one of the _schreibers_ rose and read from an interminable strip of parchment which he held in his hand the act of accusation against the female known under the popular designation of "Mother Magdalena " as attainted of the foul crime of witchcraft of the casting of spells and malefices to the annoyance and destruction of her fellow-creatures of consorting with spirits of darkness and of lascivious intercourse with the arch-fiend himself