she began to amend her child fell ill, and when her
child was well she was cast down lame and helpless.

Then Annis Letherdall had her word. Annis and Ursley had a little matter
of commerce between them, but Annis failed the suspected woman, "knowing
her to be a naughtie beast." So Ursley in revenge bewitched Annis's child,
and that so severely that Mother Ratcliffe, a skilful woman, doubted if
she could do it any good; yet for all that she ministered unto it kindly.
And, as a proof that it was Ursley, and only Ursley, who had so harmed the
babe, and that its sad state came in no wise from bad food, bad nursing,
and filthy habits, the little creature of only one year old, when it was
carried past her house, cried "wo, wo," and pointed with its finger
windowwards. What evidence could be stronger? So then, to clinch the
matter and strike fairly home, the magistrate examined Thomas Rabbet,
Ursley's "base son," a child of barely eight years of age, and got his
version of the mother's life. The little fellow's testimony went chiefly
on the imps at home. His mother had four, he said--Tyffin, like a white
lamb; Titty, a little grey cat; Pygine, a black toad; and Jacke, a black
cat; and she fed them, at times with wholesome milk and bread, and at
times they sucked blood from her body. He further said that his mother had
bewitched Johnson and his wife to death, and that she had given her imps
to Godmother Newman, who put them into an earthen pot which she hid under
her apron, and so carried them away. One Laurence then said that she had
bewitched his wife, so that when "she lay a drawing home, and continued so
a day and a night, all the partes of her body were colde like a dead
creatures, and yet at her mouth did appeare her breath to goe and come."
Thus she lingered, said her husband, until Ursley came in unbidden, turned
down the bed-clothes, and took her by the arm, when immediately she gasped
and died. Ursley at first would confess nothing beyond having had, ten or
eleven years ago, a lameness in her bones, for the cure of which she went
to Cook's wife of Wesley, who told her that she was bewitched, and taught
her a charm by which she might unwitch herself and cure her bones; which
charm quite answered its purpose, and had never failed her with her
neighbours; all else she denied. But upon Brian Darcy[104] "promising to
the saide Ursley that if she would deale plainely and confesse the truth
that she should have fauour, so by