must have been on the Hertford
road, for in looking from the window, she had caught sight of a coach
on that road with which she was familiar, as a former mistress had
been accustomed to travel in it. This circumstance, with the distance
travelled by the girl, afforded her champions a clue, and they
concentrated their researches at Enfield Wash. There they found a
questionable-looking lodging-house kept by a family of the name of
Wells, which seemed to answer to Elizabeth's description. It had a
garret with an old straw-bed, and a black pitcher was found in the
house.

Elizabeth was taken to examine this house in a sort of triumphal
procession. Her friends went on horseback, making a complete
cavalcade; she and her mother travelled in a coach. As many as could
find room seem to have simultaneously rushed into the squalid
lodging-house, and the natural astonishment and confusion of its
inmates on such an invasion were at once assigned as the symptoms of
conscious guilt. Elizabeth seemed to be at first somewhat confused and
undecided; these symptoms were attributed to the excitement of the
moment on recollection of the horrors she had endured, and to a
feeling of insecurity. She was told to take courage; she was among her
friends, who would support her cause; and she at last said decidedly,
that she was in the house where she had been imprisoned. A gipsy woman
of very remarkable appearance was present. One of the witnesses
recognised her, from her likeness to the portraits of Mother Shipton
the sorceress. She sat bending over the fire smoking a pipe, and
exhibiting through the hubbub around the imperturbable calmness
peculiar to her race. Elizabeth immediately pointed to her, and said
she was the woman who had cut her stays, and helped to put her in her
prison-room. Even this did not disturb the stolid indifference of the
old woman, who was paying no attention to what the people said. When,
however, her daughter stepped up and said: 'Good mother, this young
woman says you robbed her,' she started to her feet, turned on the
group her remarkable face, and said: 'I rob you! take care what you
say. If you have once seen my face, you cannot mistake it, for God
never made such another.' When told of the day of the robbery, she
gave a wild laugh, and said she was then above a hundred miles off in
Dorsetshire. This woman was named Squires. Her son, George Squires,
was present. Elizabeth did not seem completely to remember him a