ery and magic. Another examinate then came
forward with a story of a bewitched cow unbewitched by a fire lighted
around it: which, however, does not apparently touch any of the accused.
And then the accuser, Ales Hunt, was made to take the place of the
accused, and listen to the catalogue of her own sins. The chief witness
against her was her little daughter-in-law (step-child?) Febey, of the age
of eight or thereabouts, who deposed to her having two little things like
horses, the one white the other black, which she kept by her bedside in a
little low earthern pot with wool, colour white and black, and which she
fed with milk out of a black "trening" dish. When the Commissioners went
to search the place they found indeed the board which Phoebe said was
used to cover them, and she pointed out the trening dish whence they were
fed; but the little things like horses were gone; when Phoebe said they
had been sent to Hayward of Frowicke. After a time Alice Hunt was brought
to confess not only to two, but four, imps; two like colts, black and
white, called Jack and Robbin; and two like toads, Tom and Robbyn. Mother
Barnes, her mother, gave them to her, she said, when she died; and she
gave her sister, Margerie Sammon, two also. When Margerie was confronted
with Alice and heard what she had deposed, she got very angry and denied
the whole tale, saying: "I defie thee, though thou art my sister," saying
that she had never any imps given to her on her mother's death-bed, or at
any other time. But Alice took her aside and whispered something in her
ear; after which Margerie, "with great submission" and many tears,
confessed that she had in truth these two imps, given to her by her mother
as her sister had said, and that she had carried them away that same
evening in a wicker basket filled with black and white wool. Her mother
had said that if she did not like to keep them old Joan Pechey would be
glad of them; but she did not part with them just then; and that she was
to feed them on bread and milk, otherwise they would suck her blood. Their
names were Tom and Robbin, and last evening she took them away--being
perhaps afraid to keep them longer, now that the scent was warm--and went
into Read's ground, where she bade them "go." Immediately they skipped out
of the wicker basket toward a barred gate going into Howe Lane, to Mother
Peachey's house, whereat she, Margerie, said, "All evill goe with you, and
the Lorde in heaven blesse mee