“An owl!” echoed Farmer Tickle. “I put it to the meeting. A man as says this was an owl, and not a pixie, would say anything!” and he sat down amidst great applause. Then up rose Farmer Brown once more. “Gentlemen, and labouring men, and also women,” he began, “I’ll give you another pinch of facts. Before I was married I was going along by Culmpit one day, when I met old Betty Spry, and she sez to me, ‘Cross my hand with silver, my pretty boy, and I’ll tell you who your true love will be.’ So I thinks I’d like to know that, and I gives her a sixpence. Then sez she, ‘Mark the first maiden that you meet as you go along the lane that leads to Eastway House: she’s the one that will make you a wife.’ Well, I was going along that way, and the first maiden I met was Patience Kite. I thought she was comely and fresh-looking; so, after going a few steps on, I turns my head over my shoulder and looks back at her; and what in the world should she be doing at exactly the same minute but looking back at me! Then I went after her and said, ‘Patience, will you be Mrs. Brown?’ and she said, ‘I don’t mind, I’m noways partickler.’ And now she is my wife. Look at her yonder, as red as a turkey-cock; there she sits, and so you may know my story is true. But how did Betty Spry know this before ever I had spoken the words? That beats me!” Then, once more, up stood Farmer Tickle. “Mr. Lecturer, Mr. Chairman, I puts it to you. First and last we must come to Holy Scripter. Now, I ask you, Mr. Chairman, being our parson, and you, Mr. Lecturer, being a scholard, and all you as have got Bibles, whether Holy Scripter does not say, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’—whether Holy Scripter does not say that the works of the flesh are idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, and such like? Now, if witchcraft be all moonshine, then I reckon so be hatred, variance, and emulations too. Now, I put it to the meeting, which is true? Which does it vote for, the Holy Bible and witchcraft, or Mr. Lecturer and his new-fangled nonsense? Those in favour of Scripter and witches hold up their hands.” Need I say that witchcraft carried the day. One of Mr. Hawker’s parishioners had an encounter with pixies. Pixies, it must be explained, are elves, who dance on the sward and make fairy-rings; others work in mines; others, again, haunt old houses. This man had been to Stratton market. On his way home, as he was passing between dense hedges, suddenly he saw a light, and heard music and singing. He stood still, and looked and listened. Passing through the hedge, he saw the little people in a ring dancing; and there sat on a toadstool an elf with a lantern in his hand, made of a campanula, out of which streamed a greenish-blue light. As the pixies danced, they sang.