ailed account of the whole
matter; but whether the unknown woman was traced and found, or whether
Agnes Richardson got any mishandling for the suspicion cast on her, or
whether, again, the trick passed off without result, and no one was the
worse because a maid-servant chose to run a pin into her thigh, I can find
no record to inform me. As not much harm was done, perhaps the devil was
let off easy this time, and the hags, his mistresses, suffered to extend
their trade a little longer.

JANE STRETTON AND THE CUNNING WOMAN.[151]

Jane Stretton and her parents lived at Ware in the year 1669, Jane being
then a young maid of about twenty, generally out at service. It chanced
that Thomas, her father, lost a Bible, and must needs go to a cunning man
to ask where it was, and who had it--a thing which, as a good Christian,
he should have been ashamed of: to which the cunning man replied darkly,
"he could tell him if he would." Whereupon Stretton, not in the least
grateful for such a doubtful reply, broke out with, "Then thou must be
either a witch or a devil, seeing thou canst neither read nor write." This
was all that passed, and it seems but scant substance for a deadly
quarrel; but a few days afterwards this cunning man's wife went slily to
Stretton's, and asked daughter Jane for a pot of drink. This was to
establish direct communication. "Innocency dreads no danger: the child
will play with the Bee for his gaudy Coat, and mistrusts not his sting,"
says this flowery tract; but soon after Jane had thus committed herself to
transfers and communication with the witch, the "devil, who is a sly
thief, and though he keeps his servants poor, yet indues them, with a
plentifull stock of malice, revenge, and dissimulation," suffered this bad
woman, or this cunning man, to afflict Jane, but not so grievously as they
were suffered to do hereafter. In about a week's time the cunning man's
wife went and desired a pin of her, which Jane, granting, became suddenly
beset with fits, most terrible to behold. "But her misery ends not here:
the squib is not run out to the end of the rope. When the Devil has an
inch given to him he will take an ell;" so poor Jane was not only troubled
with fits, but must needs have her mouth stopped so that she ate nothing
for weeks and months, and was forced to live like a chameleon, on air.
Besides this, she was made to perpetually vomit flax and hair and
thread-ends and crooked pins; while blue, white, and r