and heavy that she could not lace her coat,
nor was the horse on which she rode able to carry her all the way: she had
three spirits, all like dun chickens--Pluck, Catch, and White, which had
been given her by an "upright man," extremely hard, of the name of
Langland, of no particular dwelling and now gone beyond seas; and she had
sent all three to the children and had plagued them sorely. This she said
at various times, at each clause conjuring the devil and her spirits to
inform her of the facts required by the Right Reverend Father in God.
After her examination she and her daughter were committed to gaol; but Mr.
Throckmorton got Agnes out on bail that he might take her home to the
children, and see what they would say of her. This seemed to him the best
way to complete the evidences of guiltiness against her, which at present
were very slight and worthless. So the net closed tighter and tighter
round this hapless family, and soon the deep black waves, rolling onward,
dashed over their devoted heads.

When they heard that Agnes was brought back to Warbois, the children fell
into their fits again, each saying, "I am glad, I am glad; none so glad as
I." They knew the cruel sport preparing for them, and were in no hurry to
abandon the pleasant excitement of their Possession, during which they
were made so many centres of public interest, petted and commiserated and
looked at and talked about and made of more consequence than the finest
lady in the land. When the game was over they must sink down into the
humdrum lives of good little girls in a country town, of no possible
interest to living being outside their own house door. Surely an event to
be deferred to the latest moment possible! For the first three or four
days after Agnes' arrival they condescended to be well, but, being by that
time tired of their new companion, they fell back into their former state,
and cried out against her more bitterly than they had ever done against
her mother. She was more helpless, too, than the mother, and more entirely
in their power; so that the sport was greater, and the fear of opposition
or detection less. Specially did Mistress Joan, the eldest girl, torment
her; who, being at this time seventeen, had other ideas of spirits than
dun chickens, mice, or frogs, which were all very well in the days of her
infancy but quite uninteresting to her now. The manner in which she
introduced her Spirits was singular. One day, just after her no