Mr. Zelley, in his diary, quotes Scripture in regard to this curious incident, saying in part that Our Lord warns us against the putting of new wine into old bottles, lest the new wine prove too strong and burst the bottles. ‘So a torrent of feeling—especially when arising from the passions—is of the greatest danger to a weak container, and young Mr. Thumb is that weak container.’ At that moment, however, Titus had but one thought, and that was that at last the wench was in his arms, for she was so weakened by fear (or perhaps from the actual shock of the bullet) she could hardly stand. He comforted her, stroking her hair, kissing her, and saying over and over that he would have died rather than hurt a hair of her head. Concerning the fact that, but a second before, she had been in other shape and enjoying a different gender, he said nothing, for he thought that she might wish to remain mute concerning the matter, and then he thought: ‘It was because of kindness, at least if not towards me, towards the bull, that made this modest young female assume another shape. How could she, as a white girl, have ventured to the forest and found Ahab?’ So he said nothing. Now that at last his arms were about her, he felt none of the fire and anguish he had endured the night before; rather, it seemed to him, that he was caressing and comforting one of his own sisters. So he set her sideways on the bull, and took her to her own house. By the time he had reached his father’s farm, he was once more swept by such inordinate and passionate desire he could not believe that earlier in the same morning he had kissed and comforted her, thinking her only a child—not even a witch and much less a woman. CHAPTER III 1 _Young Thumb dwindles. The witch torments him and her foster father discerns that she is not nor ever can be a Christian woman._ From the day on which Ahab was lost and recovered, Titus began a secret courting of Doll. Witch or no witch he would have no other. On the one side of him was his father, winking at him and pointing out the richness of Mr. Bilby’s fields, the weight of his cattle, the size of his barns. On the other side of him was his fond mother, whispering and whispering, ‘The girl’s a witch, she’ll come to no good end, she’ll hang yet, the girl’s a witch ... witch ... witch.’ Of all these matrimonial plans Mrs. Hannah knew nothing. She saw that Titus was much about the house, but, being very proud of her beauty (which was remarkable in a woman of her years), she believed in her own heart that she was the reason for the young man’s constant presence. She could not believe so handsome and sought after a young man could see anything to desire in the ridiculous hobgoblin-child. Doll Bilby flouted him at every turn, yet was he always after her, hungry as a cat for fish.