"'Od rabbet thee, and thy fizzlegig foolery!" she exclaimed, setting her teeth together, as she was wont when moved more strongly than usual, "what maggots hast thou got into thy star-gazing noddle, now? A witch, indeed! Who will take thee to be a wizard for saying so, thou dreaming old owl? Marry, come up! I say a witch, too!"--and then she shook poor Toby till his teeth chattered, and he would fain have uttered a loud alarm, but durst not speak, for the life of him. The dame left him to recover his courage, and laughed heartily, in spite of some slight feeling of vexation, as she told the story to her customers during the day. A few hours served to bring a crowd round the tailor's dwelling, though none would enter it; and, till night-fall, Toby's ears were assailed with epithets which shook his nerves till he wished himself a thousand miles off, as he afterwards said to Joe. During the evening, the elder and more influential members of the little population of Haxey went from house to house expressing their deep regret for Toby Lackpenny's lunacy,--for they decided that he _was_ lunatic,--and conjuringly besought the younger and more frivolous people to desist from persecution of one who had always been so good and kind-hearted a neighbour, and was now under a visitation of Providence that rendered him an object of commiseration rather than ridicule. And so the victim of imagination was delivered from the storm of persecution which he had foreboded would be renewed on the succeeding day. Desirous, on her part, of making Toby feel the value of her neighbourship, Dame Deborah never crossed his threshold on that day. Toby was thus left a solitary; and yet his mental disease had not yet reached a stage that would render solitude curative. On the contrary, it permitted his prurient imagination to become more mischievous in its influence. A neat little dove-cote was a conspicuous rural adornment to the ancient gable of Dame Deborah's dwelling; and its cooing habitants were familiarly acquainted with the tailor's threshold, and even with his cottage-floor,--whither they were often attracted by the crumbs Toby spread upon it, when his favourite tabby had strayed forth from the cot, and so could give no alarm to these feathered visitants. Toby had been reading a full description, during that solitary morning, in one of his witchery-books, of the way in which the most powerful of all charms might be prepared for subjugating a witch or a wizard; and the entrance of one of Dame Deborah's pigeons, into his cottage, seemed to give him the opportunity he coveted of testing the efficacy of the prescribed charm. He wilily closed his door, and after a brief struggle, captured the bird,--which he, forthwith, secured, by shutting it up in the oaken corner cupboard, which served him for wardrobe, larder, and coal-cellar.