A more prosaic form of the ordeal of chance is the trial by Bible and key which is of old Teutonic origin.[1131] It is still in common use in England, where it may even yet “be met with in many an out-of-the-way-farm-house.” In cases of theft a key is secured at Psalm 50, 18: “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers;”[1132] and the mode in which it is expected to reveal guilt is manifested in a case recorded in the London _Times_ as occurring at Southampton in 1867, where a sailor boy on board a collier was brought before court on a charge of theft, the only evidence against him being that afforded by securing a key in a Bible opposite the first chapter of Ruth. The Bible was then swung round while the names of several suspected persons were repeated, and on the mention of the prisoner’s name the book fell on the floor. A somewhat different method is recounted in a case reported by the journals in 1879, where a woman in Ludlow, who had lost a sheet, perambulated the streets of the town with a Bible and key, and brought a prosecution against a person whose guilt she had thus discovered. It was explained in court that the key was placed at Ruth I. 16, the investigator holding his fingers crossed, and when the thief was named the key would spontaneously move. In this case the prosecutrix declared that when she came to the defendant’s house “the Bible turned completely round and fell out of her hands.” A variant of this, described in two MSS. of the twelfth century, consisted in placing a piece of wood over the verse of the Psalm, “Thou art just, O Lord, and thy judgment is true;” the book was then securely bound so that the head of the wood protruded, and it was suspended, while a priest uttered an adjuration and the accused was questioned, the result being apparently determined by the motion or rest of the book. Still another form consisted of suspending a small loaf of bread which had been placed behind the altar during mass and at its conclusion blessed and marked with a cross by the priest. At the trial he uttered a conjuration, when if the bread turned the accused was held guilty.[1133]