to the imps--"the White Imp is believed to have been a Lock of Wool taken out of her Basket to spin; and its Shadow, it is supposed, was the Black one." Not an impossibility with an ignorant country clown, reeling home half drunk from the alehouse, and disposed to make a miracle out of the plainest matter before him seen through a witch's window. At the Ipswich assizes of that same year the Lord Chief Justice had to hold the sword of judgment unsheathed between Margaret Elnore and her accusers. Margaret belonged to a family of witches, her grandmother and her aunt having been both hanged for that rational offence; and now, when Mrs. Rudge had been for three years in a languishing condition--ever since her husband had refused to take Elnore for his tenant--what so likely as that she was bewitched, and that the enraged witch and relative of witches had done it? Besides, women who had quarrelled with Margaret had found themselves suddenly covered with vermin, not at all due to their own uncleanly habits, but to the diabolical power of old Elnore, who would send lice or locusts, disease or death, just as it suited her. For she had eight or nine imps, and she was plainly branded with the witch marks. Lord Chief Justice Holt pooh-poohed the imps and the vermin, and directed again a verdict of Not Guilty. So Margaret Elnore was suffered to live out the natural term of her life, and Mrs. Rudge recovered her health for a certain time; but--some years after Margaret was peaceably laid in her grave--"fell again into the same Kind of Pains (supposed from the Salt Humour), and died of the same Distemper."