Meanwhile matters were very uncomfortable for Mr. K. Accused by a ghost, he had no legal remedy. Goldsmith, like most writers, assumes that Parsons undertook the imposture, in revenge for having been sued for money lent by Mr. K. He adds that Mr. K. was engaged in a Chancery suit by his relations, and seems to suspect their agency. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was being 'tested' in various ways. Finally the unlucky child was swung up in a kind of hammock, 'her hands and feet extended wide,' and, for two nights, no noises were heard. Next day she was told that, if there were no noises, she and her father would be committed to Newgate. She accordingly concealed a little board, on which a kettle usually stood, a piece of wood six inches by four. She managed this with so little art that the maids saw her place the wood in her dress, and informed the investigators of the circumstances. Scratches were now produced, but the child herself said that they were not like the former sounds, and 'the concurrent opinion of the whole assembly was that the child had been frightened by threats into this attempt. . . . The master of the house and his friend both declared that the noises the girl had made this morning _had not the least likeness to the former noises_.' In the same way the Wesleys at Epworth, in 1716, found that they could not imitate the perplexing sounds produced in the parsonage. The end of the affair was that Parsons, Mary Frazer, a clergyman, a tradesman, and others were tried at the Guildhall and convicted of a conspiracy, on July 10, 1762. Parsons was pilloried, and 'a handsome collection' was made for him by the spectators. His later fortunes, or misfortunes, and those of the miserable little Elizabeth, are unknown. One thing is certain, the noises did not begin in an attempt at imposture on Parsons's part; he was on good terms with his lodgers, when Fanny was first disturbed. Again, the child could not counterfeit the sounds successfully when she was driven by threats to make the effort. The seance of rather more than an hour, in which Johnson took part, was certainly inadequate. The phenomena were such as had been familiar to law and divinity, at least since 856, A.D. {170a} The agencies always made accusations, usually false. The knocking spirit at Kembden, near Bingen, in 856 charged a priest with a scandalous intrigue. The raps on the bed of the children examined by the Franciscans, about 1530, assailed the reputation of a dead lady. When the Foxes, at Rochester, in 1848- 49, set up alphabetic communication with the knocks, they told a silly tale of a murder. The Cock Lane ghost lied in the same way. The Fox girls started modern spiritualism on its wild and mischievous career, as Elizabeth Parsons might have done, in a more favourable environment. There was never anything new in all these cases. The lowest savages have their seances, levitations, bindings of the medium, trance-speakers; Peruvians, Indians, have their