THE DISAPPEARING SERVANT WENCH

Elizabeth Canning went from her Friends between nine and ten on Monday Night, being New Year’s Night; betwixt Houndsditch & Bishopsgate, freshcolour’d, pitted with ye Small-pox, high Forehead, light Eyebrows, about five foot high, well-set, had on a purple masquerade stuff Gown, black stuff Petticoat, a white Chip Hat bound round with green, white Apron and Handkerchief, blue Stockings, and leather Shoes. Any Coachman, who remembers taking up such a Person, and can give any Account where she is, shall have Two Guineas Reward, to be paid by Mrs. Canning, in Aldermanbury Postern, Sawyer, which will greatly satisfy her Mother.

These lines were roughly printed in the form of a handbill. My friend Dr. Sam: Johnson, detector of crime and chicane, produced the dog’s-eared scrap of paper from the accumulations in his untidy book-garret in his house in Johnson’s Court. I perused it with care.

“Pray, sir,” I ventured, “have you still, in April, hopes of finding the girl? Sure the thing is all too plain. The lass has been caught up and carried off by some rakish fellow, and now ten to one she plies a shameful trade by Covent Garden, and shames to return to her mother.”

“No, sir, there you are out. The girl has returned to her home long since.”

“Why then, sir, the girl has told her tale, and there’s an end on’t.”

“Yes, sir, the girl has told her tale indeed, and thence arises the puzzle.”

“Pray tell it me.”

“Why, thus sir: ’Twas King Charles’s Martyrdom Eve, eight and twenty days after that fatal New Year’s Day, and the sawyer’s ’prentice was just upon locking the door for the night, when there comes a faint knocking. ’Tis Elizabeth Canning! She is sodden, and starving, and exhausted and blue, and her cloathes are gone. Good lack, cries Goody Canning, Bet, what has happened to you? And Bet tells her tale. Stay, you shall hear it as she told it in Bow Street.”

From a mass of old printed papers my bulky friend drew a thin pamphlet, and from it began to read out in his sonorous voice:

“The INFORMATION of Elizabeth Canning of Aldermanbury Postern, London, Spinster.

“This Informant, upon her Oath, saith, that on Monday, the First Day of January last past, she, this Informant, went to see her Uncle and Aunt, who live at Salt-Petre Bank, near Rosemary-Lane, in the County of Middlesex, and continued with them until the Evening; and saith, That upon her Return home, about Half an Hour after Nine, being opposite Bethlehem-gate in Moorfields, she, this Informant, was seized by two men (whose Names are unknown to her, this Informant) who both had brown Bob-wigs on, and drab-coloured Great-coats; one of whom held her, this Informant, whilst the other, feloniously and violently, took from her one Shaving Hat, one Stuff Gown, and one Linen Apron, which she had on; and also, Half a Guinea in Gold, and three Shillings in Silver; and then he that held her threatened to do for this Informant. And this Informant saith, That, immediately after, they, the same two Men, violently took hold of her, and dragged her up into the Gravel-walk that leads down to the said Gate, and about the Middle thereof he the said Man, that first held her, gave her, with his Fist, a very violent Blow upon the right Temple, which threw her into a Fit, and deprived her of her Senses (which Fits, she, this Informant, saith she is accustomed and subject to, upon being frighted, and that they often continue for six or seven Hours …)”

“Stay, stay, sir,” I implored, “for here is such a foyson of this Informant, and the said Informanat, as carries me back to the Court of Session, whence I am newly a truant; so pray, sir, give me the straight of the story without circumlocution.”

“Well, then, sir: Bet Canning told a horrid tale, how these pandours in bob-wigs snatched her up by Bedlam Gate, and carried her off in her fit. They carried her off to a bawdy-house in the suburbs, said Bet; and there an old woman took her by the hand, and My dear, says she, will you go our way? For if you do, you shall have fine clothes. No, says Bet. Straightway the old woman takes up a carving-knife, and cuts the lace of the girl’s stays, which the men in bob-wigs had overlooked, and takes them from her. Then she feels of the girl’s petticoats. These are of no use, says she, I’ll give you them. With that she gives the girl a great slap in the chops, and turns her up a pair of stairs, half-naked as she was, into a kind of loft or shuffleboard room. There, said Betty, she found some old mouldy bread and a broken jug full of water; but for which, and a penny minced pye which she happened to have by her, she had starved to death. For eight-and-twenty days no soul came nigh her. On the five-and-twentieth day the bread was all gone. On the eight-and-twentieth day she broke out at the window and ran away home.”

“Sure, sir,” I cried, “these were no Christians, but heathen Turks, so to misuse a poor innocent girl!”

“Yet you will allow, sir, that ’tis an excess of Christianity, thus to suffer for eight-and-twenty days an unnecessary martyrdom; for she who can break out at a window on the eight-and-twentieth day of fasting, might have done so with less fatigue on the first.”

“Heathen Turks,” I reiterated hotly, “and I heartily wish they may have been laid by the heels.”

“As to Turks, Bozzy, you are not so far out; and as to laying by the heels, they were so. And a precious crew they proved to be, being the old bawd, Susannah Wells by name, and a parcel of gipsies, her lodgers. They carried the girl to the suburbs to identify the people and the place. This is the house, says Bet; this is the shuffleboard room; and these are the miscreants, says she, pointing at the gipsies. It was the old gipsy woman cut my stays; and I think, says she, I think the gipsy man her son was one of the men in bob-wigs; while as to the two gipsy wenches her daughters, though they laughed at me they did nothing to me. As to the old bawd, I don’t know that ever I saw her in my life before.”

“I hope,” cried I, “that the whole precious crew have long since had their just deserts.”

“No, sir,” replied my friend coolly, “’tis true, the world was once of your mind; Wells was branded in the hand, and the old gipsy woman was to hang for the stays. But the old woman found friends, who have so managed, that she had the King’s pardon, and placed the girl in the dock in her stead.”

“Upon what charge?” I cried.

“Upon a charge of perjury.”

“Monstrous!” I exclaimed angrily. “How mean you, friends? The publican of some ale-house under a hedge?”

“No, sir,” replied Dr. Johnson. “I will name but one: the Lord Mayor of London.”

I gaped.

“You have wished to see the sights of London,” remarked my friend. “Here is one you are not to pass by. The girl takes her trial today.”

Now it was clear why my friend had caused me to hear the girl’s story. The curtain was about to rise on a new act of the drama.

“Will you come, sir?”

“No, sir. I am too old and too thick in the middle to batter my way into the press at the Old Bailey.”

I was young and spry. I clapped on my three-cornered hat and made off down Fleet Street to the Sessions House in the ancient street known as the Old Bailey.

Before I had turned the corner a muttering sound told me of the crowd that was milling uneasily in the paved court-yard. I was not to be daunted. I butted and pushed my way until I stood, half-suffocated, under the balcony and close by the dock.

On the long bench at the front sat the Justices of Oyer and Terminer, the lawyers in robes, the aldermen with their chains of office about their necks. On the floor before them a spry man with his bag-wig pushed back was talking in brisk tenor tones. But I had no eyes for them.

On the raised platform of the dock, clinging to the rail that fenced it, stood the girl. She was a stocky chit, no higher than five feet, drest in a clean linnen gown. She wore buckled shoes and a decent lawn kerchief, and her plain cap was fastened under her chin. The light fell on her pink, expressionless face. The spry lawyer was describing her in unflattering terms as a liar for profit; but the large blue eyes never flickered. Elizabeth Canning looked at him as if he weren’t there at all.

Then her eyes shifted, and I followed her gaze. Seated to one side, in a large armed chair, sat the most hideous old hag I had ever had the misfortune to see. She was bent, and tremulous, and swarthy. Swathing clouts half-hid a face like a night-mare. She had a great frog’s mouth smeared all over the lower half of her face. Her chin was aflame with the purple scars of an old disease, and her swarthy hooked nose jutted over all. This was Mary Squires, the gipsy beldame. She was attended by a sparkling dark girl and a trim-built young gipsy man.

I could not read the stolid girl’s expression, as she looked at her enemy. It held neither indignation nor remorse, but something more like puzzlement.

For ten mortal hours I stood on my feet as the gipsy’s witnesses followed one another on the stand.

“How is it with Canning?” asked Dr. Johnson as I supped with him. “Is she cast?”

“No, sir,” I replied. “There are prosecution witnesses still to come, spare the defence; for length this trial bids fair to make history.”

“Pray, how will it go?”

“Sir,” I replied, “ill, I fear. Here have been forty witnesses come up from Dorset to swear an alibi for yonder gipsy hag. She was strolling, they will stand to it, through the Dorset market-towns peddling such smuggled goods as she might come by in the sea-ports. Here has been a most respectable witness, an exciseman, who will swear it, that they lay in the excise office at Abbotsbury on the very night. Here have been landlords of inns from Abbotsbury to London to trace them on their way, bar only a four-days’ journey from Coombe to Basingstoke. They came to Enfield full three weeks after Canning absconded. How ’tis managed I know not, but the girl is devoted to doom.”

A knocking interrupted my discourse. The knocker proved to be a heavy-set red-faced man. He was accompanied by a younger man, a spindle-shanked sandy fellow with a long nose. Between them they supported a weeping woman. The woman was fortyish, and ample to overflowing.

The sandy young man burst immediately into speech.

“Robert Scarrat, hartshorn-rasper, at your service, sir, which I rasps hartshorn on a piece basis for Mrs. Waller of Old ’Change, and her son is tenant to Mrs. Canning here.”

The weeping woman snuffled and confirmed the hartshorn-rasper with a nod.

“This here,” the nervous strident tones hurried on, “is by name John Wintlebury, as is landlord of the Weavers’ Arms, and Bet Canning was a servant in his house.”

“’Tis a good wench,” rumbled the publican.

“Nevertheless they have contrived her ruin among them,” cried the woman, “and will transport her to the plantations—unless you, sir, would undertake to clear up the matter.”

“You must tell me,” replied my friend, “what they are saying about her.”

“’Tis never true that I hid her for my gain,” cried out the weeping mother, smearing her bleared eyes with a thick finger, “for I never had rest, day nor night, for wondering where she was. Mostly I thought her dead in Houndsditch, sir, or catched up by some rakish young fellow. I had dreams and wandering thoughts, and I prayed day and night to have a vision of her. But the cunning man said—”

“The cunning man?”

“A mere piece of woman’s folly, sir,” muttered the innkeeper, but Mrs. Canning paid him no mind.

“The cunning man in the Old Bailey. I went to him to have news of her, he had a black wig over his face.”

“What said he?”

“Not a word, sir, only wrote, scribble, scribble, scribble along. He said, an old black woman had my daughter, and she would return soon.”

“Ay,” chimed in the hartshorn-rasper, his prominent hazel eyes rolling with superstitious awe, “is’t not strange, sir?”

Mrs. Canning shuddered, and sobbed harder than ever. The landlord laid his hand on the woman’s arm.

“Be easy, ma’am,” he said gently, “for we know Bet’s a good girl, and Dr. Johnson will soon make the matter clear. No need to take the hystericks over it.”

The woman moaned. Scarrat took up the tale.

“Nor ’tis not true,” he went on, “that I went off with the girl for my pleasure, for she was unknown to me.”

“Ay,” seconded the landlord, “for all the time she lived in my house, she was modest and shy, and would scarce so much as go to the door to speak to a man; and though Mr. Scarrat frequented the house, they never exchanged a word.”

“And,” cried the spindly man, growing hot, “as to my forging this tale, out of revenge against the bawd, ’tis false as Hell, though indeed I owe the creature no kindness.”

“A notorious woman,” said Wintlebury, “I knew of her infamous brothel when I lived and courted in Hertford.”

“Oh, pray, pray, Dr. Johnson,” sobbed out the weeping mother, “will not you help us?”

“Do, sir,” I seconded. “Could you but see the vile face of the gipsy hag, you would rush to the girl’s defence.”

“As to faces,” replied my friend, “there’s no art to find in them the mind’s construction; and as to helping, if I must come down to the Old Bailey, ’twill not do.”

The fat woman gave a howl and fell to the floor in a paroxysm. There was instant confusion. The fat friend and the thin one fell to slapping her wrists, while I applied under her snubby nose the hartshorn-bottle which was perhaps the fruit of Mr. Scarrat’s endeavours.

When she had gasped and sat up, I turned to my kindly friend.

“Pray give your assistance,” I begged. “I will be your deputy to the Old Bailey.”

My friend accepted of my offer, and the friends of Canning departed in better cheer.

Only the fame of my companion gained us access to the gipsy. She sat in the best room of the White Horse, in the Haymarket, and regarded us sardonically with black, beady eyes. She was surrounded by a court of Dorsetshire fishermen, King’s landwaiters, and gipsies in leather breeches. Her pretty daughter sat hand in hand with a tall man in fustian; I recognized with a start one of the principal witnesses for the prosecution, a cordwainer of Dorset. A black-browed little raisin of a man turned out to be the girl’s uncle, Samuel Squires, a landwaiter of the customs right here in London and a gipsy of considerable influence.

Dr. Johnson ran a lowering eye over the motley crew; the men of the customs particularly took his eye. Then he waved them all away, and to my relief they went.

“Now, ma’am,” says Dr. Johnson, “out with it. There’s more in this than meets the eye.”

The beady eyes measured him.

“I will confess,” said the rusty voice.

I thrilled to my toes. The girl was saved!

“I’ll confess. Though I have passed myself for a strolling pedlar, I am in reality—”

Dr. Johnson leaned forward.

“I am in reality—a witch. I can be present at two places at one time,” whispered the old beldame with hoarse and ostentatious caution, “and though all these people saw me in Dorset, I nevertheless carried Canning to Enfield on my broom-stick—”

Dr. Johnson cut short her triumphant cackle by rising to his feet.

“Have a care, ma’am,” he said angrily, “I am not to be trifled with.”

The old hag leaned back and laughed in his face.

“I know you are no witch,” my friend went on grimly, “but I will tell you what you are.”

He spoke three words in her ear. Her face changed. She looked at him with more respect.

“Ah,” she said, “I see you are in the councils of, the great.”

“I can see a church by daylight,” replied Johnson as we withdrew.

I made off, being engaged to dine with some ladies in St. James’s, but Dr. Johnson turned into the tap-room and lingered.

“Alack, Mr. Boswell,” he told me when again we met. “Alas for Bet Canning, the rusticks are honest. I had their story over a can of ale, and with such a wealth of detail as can scarce be forgery. The honest cordwainer loves the gipsy wench; he dallied eight days in their company at Abbotsbury, and when they departed he followed them on the road. There are landlords to swear to them all, and the things they saw and the meals they ate. So rich is the tale, it must be more than mendacious invention.”

“Yet who pays,” I cried, “who pays the scot of the poor gipsy pedlar and her forty witnesses at the White Horse in the Haymarket? Who keeps them in victuals and gin?”

“My Lord Mayor, ’tis said,” replied my companion. “But come, Mr. Boswell, let me know your mind: shall we push forward and uncover the truth, wherever it lies? Or shall we leave Bet Canning to her luck with the jury?”

“Let us wait,” I replied uneasily, “and see.”

I filled the days of waiting in the court-room of the Old Bailey, where each day the girl sat in the dock with her wrists crossed before her, and looked on without expression while witnesses called her liar or martyr.

“How goes the trial, Bozzy?” demanded my friend as I returned bedraggled from another day’s session.

“Ill, for the girl, ill,” I replied dejectedly. “You may know how ill, when I tell you that the Lord Mayor was pelted by the resentful Canningite rabble as he came away from the Sessions-house. The girl has been made to appear a liar. Before the sitting Aldermen, so he has sworn, she described her prison to be little, square, and dark. Then they took her to Enfield; when it appeared that the room she swore to was long and light, with many other contradictions. I know not what to think.”

A starved girl, after long imprisonment, may surely exhibit some confusion,” suggested Dr. Johnson thoughtfully.

“There is more,” I replied. “From Enfield came many witnesses, who swore that they visited her supposed prison during that month, and saw there no such person as Elizabeth Canning.”

“What said the girl to this?”

“Never a word, save once. ’Twas a son of Wells’s testified, he stepped into the shuffleboard room to lay by his tools, for he is a carpenter, and there was no soul there save the labouring man that lodged there. Bet Canning leaned forward, and scanned him closely. She frowned, and looked him up and down. I never saw him before, as I know of, says she.”

“Why did she so?”

“Who can tell? ’Tis a strange wench. Just so, by the evidence, did she comport herself when they took her to Enfield: would not be sure of the gipsy man, could not be sure she had ever seen Wells. Only the gipsy woman she swore to without hesitation. They report strange things of the girl, too, in Wells’s loft. Do you remember that six-foot nest of drawers? says they. I never saw it before, says Miss. Do you remember the hay and the saddles stored up here? says they. She scratches her head. I will not swear, says she, but there is more hay. As to the saddles, I remember one only. But there was a grate, says she. O no, says they, look for yourself. There’s no grate and never has been: look at the cobwebs. There was a grate, says she, and from it I took the rags I wore when I fled. There was never a grate, says they.”

“Is it so!” cried my venerable friend. “Here is no liar, but one trying to speak the truth. Bozzy, we must save this girl!”

I stared. The evidence, that had shaken my faith in the girl, had spoken quite otherwise to him. It had spoken with such clear moral force and conviction that it stirred his great bulk, and brought it next morning into the court-room of the Old Bailey.

He cleared his way through the press like a bailiff, with jerks of his sturdy oak staff. We were in time to hear the defence begin. The crowd murmured in sympathy as Bet’s sad story was repeated by her friends as they had heard it from her on that Monday in January. All her natural functions were suspended, related the apothecary in sepulchral tones, the whole time of her imprisonment; she was very faint and weak, and the black-and-blue marks never went off for a month afterwards. My venerable friend shook his head from side to side, and clicked his tongue.

Burning glances of sympathy were levelled at the abused girl where she sat impassive in the dock as the story was told. They changed to looks of triumph as the defence brought aces out of their sleeves—a witness who had seen the girl led past his turnpike, in tears, by a pair of ruffians; three persons who had seen the bedraggled creature returning in the misty evening.

Dr. Johnson, seated on a bench with his chin on his staff, frowned and shook his head.

“How can this help?” he muttered. “The girl swore she was dragged off in a fit. Now we find she walked by the turnpike. Where is truth to be found?”

The defence rested.

It was three o’clock the next morning when I knocked up my friend.

“The girl is cast!” I told him. “She will be transported.”

“Cast!” exclaimed my friend. “What this girl has been, I know not; but she is no perjurer.”

A double knock announced a later walker than I. Again it was John Wintlebury and Robert Scarrat.

“You must help us!” cried the hartshorn-rasper. “Can you give us no hope?”

“Only this, that the girl is innocent,” replied my friend. “I will do what I can. Where is the girl?”

“Alack,” exclaimed the volatile Scarrat, “in New-gate.”

“Then we must have her out.”

That was easier said than done, but Johnson managed it. Scarrat carried the request. Meanwhile, off went the black boy Francis to the White Horse. He came back with a note:

“She says she will come, if only to laugh.

Ma: Squires”

The old gipsy woman herself was not far behind. Next to arrive was Mother Wells. She came supported by the carpenter son. My friend received his curious callers with solemn dignity, and offered them cakes and port. The wrinkled old bawd guzzled hers with coarse greed.

It was still dark night when a sedan-chair turned into Johnson’s Court. It was attended by two turnkeys and followed by our friends, once again supporting between them the highstrung matron. All three tenderly extracted from the chair the stocky person of Elizabeth Canning, and so she was assisted up the stair.

Dr. Johnson took her hand.

“Do not be afraid, my dear.”

“I am not afraid,” said Bet Canning.

She looked levelly at the hideous old gipsy hag, then at the bawd. The latter wiped a drool of port off her chin. Dr. Johnson handed the girl to a chair, her friends found places, and a hush fell as everyone in the room looked toward my learned friend.

“My dear,” said Dr. Johnson, addressing himself to the girl, “there are those who think you are lying. I do not think you are lying.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The gipsy beldame, a mere huddle of rags except for her bright black eyes, snorted.

“But, my dear,” my friend continued quietly, “there is much that is dark, much that you have not been able to tell us.”

“I have told,” said Bet Canning clearly, “all that I know.”

“We must look further, then. There is one in this cause,” said Dr. Johnson, “who seemed a knowledgeable man.”

I leaned forward.

“Who?”

“The cunning man,” replied my learned friend solemnly. “He knew where Elizabeth was, and he wrote it down, scribble, scribble, scribble along. He was right. I would have consulted him myself, but he is not to be found. There is no conjurer in the Old Bailey.”

“I saw him there myself,” cried Mrs. Canning. “He had his wig over his face; and when he lighted up the candles, he frighted me, and I could not stay for more.”

“Well, well, he is gone away from thence, he is no longer to be consulted. We must make do without him.”

He produced a leather case, which being opened revealed a gleaming polished disc of some black substance.

“This,” said Dr. Johnson solemnly, “is the famous Black Stone of Dr. Dee the alchemist. I had it of Mr. Walpole against this night’s purpose. Into it,” he lowered his sonorous voice another pitch, “the alchemist used to call his spirits, and they revealed the truth to him.”

Nobody spoke.

Dr. Johnson extinguished the candles, all but one, which gleamed fitfully on the table, accentuating rather than piercing the darkness. For a moment there was dead silence.

“Before the spirits speak,” said Dr. Johnson, “has no one a word to tell us?”

I heard somebody gasp. The old gipsy was shaking and muttering to herself, it might have been a charm or an incantation. Mrs. Canning was crying again, in long shuddering gasps, and the hartshorn-rasper was twitching where he sat. Only the stolid inn-keeper and the cynical old bawd preserved an unbroken calm.

Elizabeth Canning’s gaze caught and hung on the gleaming speculum. Her plain face was white as paper.

“Pray, my girl,” said Dr. Johnson gently, “look into the magick stone of Dr. Dee, and tell us what you see.”

“I see nothing,” she faltered.

“You will see the truth,” said my friend. “Look well, and tell us what you see.”

The girl stared into the polished surface, scarcely seeming to breathe. Her eyes contracted to pinpoints. She sat rigid.

“It is the night of January I,” breathed my friend in the silence. “Do you see Elizabeth Canning?”

“I see her.”

The voice was tight-and high, and seemed to come from a long way off.

“I see Elizabeth Canning. She is walking between two men, and weeping. It is a road, with water in it. Now they turn into a house, there is an old woman there.”

“Swarthy and black?”

“No, grey and wrinkled. She takes away her clothes, and puts her into a room.”

“Without any furniture?

“No,” replied the trance-like voice. “No, it is the best bedroom. The door opens, and the man comes in. Now Elizabeth can see his face. It is he. It is the same man who wanted Elizabeth to do the bad thing, always and always he was at her elbow saying it to her, and she would not. Now he is here to do it, and Elizabeth cannot help herself.”

In a violent shudder the dreaming voice died away. For a moment there was silence in the room.

“Here,” muttered Wintlebury finally, “you must stop this, sir, you’ve bewitched the girl to her hurt. Who knows what she’ll say?”

“She’ll say the truth,” said Dr. Johnson sharply. “Be silent, sir, and listen.”

He spoke soothingly to the rigid girl.

“It is the eve of King Charles’s Martyrdom. Do you see Elizabeth Canning?”

“I see her.”

“Where is she?”

“She is in the loft. The wicked man has left her behind, they have taken away her clothes, she cannot eat for shame. Because she would not do the bad thing with other men, they have beaten her and thrust her into the loft. She wants to go home, but she does not know where home is. She has forgotten her name. She has forgotten everything. She is very wretched.”

Again the level voice died away.

“And then?”

The polished disc gleamed in the candlelight.

“And then she hears her name spoken, and she knows it is hers. She looks down into the kitchen and sees the ugly-face gipsy. She is hungry and cold and afraid. The minced pye is still in the pocket of her torn petticoat; it is stale and dry, but she eats it. She takes an old rag from the fireplace to wrap herself in, and breaks out at the window, and runs away home.”

“But the grate?” I struck in.

“A saw across the fireplace,” said a quiet voice in my ear. It was the young carpenter. “My cross-cut saw.”

“She runs away home. They ask where she has been for four weeks; but she has forgotten. Only it seems to her that she was somewhere hungry and cold, and she has been somehow harmed, the ugly-face woman must have done it, and her cloathes are gone; so she tells them as best she can what must have happened, and they believe her, and are very angry. Even the man who did the bad thing to her, he is angry too, and wants the gipsy hanged. Elizabeth has forgotten what he did to her; she thinks he is her friend.”

“The man,” Dr. Johnson leaned forward gently, “who was the man?”

“That’s enough of this flummery,” came an angry voice. “Can’t you see that the girl is mad?”

A rough hand struck aside the magick speculum of Dr. Dee. Elizabeth Canning looked up into an out-thrust face, somehow distorted in the flickering light of the candle from below, and recoiled with scream after scream of terror. Then the candle flame was struck out, and footsteps clattered on the stair.

“Let him go,” said Dr. Johnson. “Mr. John Wintlebury is not the first to enforce his desires on a virtuous serving-wench, and I fear there’s no law to touch him.”

“I’ll touch him,” cried the hartshorn-rasper violently. “I’ll—I’ll rasp him!”

He held the shuddering girl tight against his shoulder. He touched her pale hair.

“She’s not mad, sir?” he pleaded.

“Not the least in the world,” replied my friend, “yet hers is a strange affliction. The learned call it the catalepsy. One so afflicted may preach, or prophesy, or fast without hunger, or cut his flesh with knives, and not feel it; or fall unconscious and lie as the dead; or believe the body’s functions to be pretermitted; or they may upon great suffering or shame forget who they are, and wander homeless until they remember. It was Mr. John Wintlebury’s good luck that the wronged girl forgot him and the wrong he did her, and even herself, for very shame.”

“And my bad luck,” croaked the gipsy crone, “for the story that came from her disturbed mind put me into jeopardy of my life.”

“You were never in jeopardy, being what you are,” returned Dr. Johnson.

“What are you?” I burst out uncontrollably.

“A customs spy,” replied the old witch, “and a good one, young man. Who’d ever suspect the old gipsy beggar when she came nosing about the barns? I knew every smugglers’ lay on that coast. O no, me Lord Treasurer wouldn’t have let the old gipsy woman hang. ’Twas but a few nights lying hard in gaol; he could not move openly in the matter, for fear of betraying me and mine to the smugglers. In the end me Lord Mayor had his orders, and I was enlarged.”

“And Mother Wells?” I touched flint and steel to the candle.

“It all happened,” my friend replied, “of course, in her house of assignation; it was she who beat the girl when she would not go the way of the house.”

I advanced the candle toward the old bawd’s corner. The lees of her port were there in the glass, but the old woman was gone.

“Upon her,” remarked Dr. Johnson, “justice has been done. You will remember that, although Mary Squires was pardoned, Susannah Wells has been branded on the hand for her part in the work.”

Elizabeth Canning’s sobs had died away, and she lay in a sleep like death against the hartshorn-rasper’s shoulder.

“When she awakes,” he asked, “will she remember?”

“I cannot say,” replied my learned friend. “Perhaps she will remember everything. If not, you must tell her, gently, over and over, until the two times join into one in her mind and she no longer has those agonizing moments of trying to remember, like the time in the loft, or in the dock when she struggled to remember the young carpenter.”

He pulled aside the heavy curtains and let in the dawn.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I will wait upon the Secretary of State.”

The sun was up as the sleepy turnkeys rouzed to help lift the unconscious girl back into the sedan-chair. My benevolent friend followed it with his eyes to the mouth of the court.

“The issue of this night’s sitting,” he remarked with a half-smile, “has exceeded expectation. I reasoned that someone close to the girl knew where she was, else why the cunning man with the muffled face, who must write his predictions? Clearly his face and his voice were known. I brought her friends together, and produced a conjuration of my own. I hoped that superstition would affright one of them, and even that the girl might take courage and ‘see’ in the speculum what perhaps she had been frighted from telling. I never guessed that so strange is the mind in a catalepsy that it will see truly, as it were in a sleep, what it has forgotten in waking.”

[The disappearance of Elizabeth Canning from her aunt’s house in London in 1753 was a nine-days’ wonder which was not solved in her time. To make a story of it, I advanced the date to bring it under Boswell’s eye, and supplied an invented solution which came to me one night in sleep. Working it up along those lines, I soon came to see that my subconscious had hit upon the actual and only possible solution of the bizarre affair. The whole story will be found in my Elizabeth Is Missing (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1945). There the curious reader may find how the matter actually came out (without the intervention of Dr. Johnson) and what kind of a happy ending Elizabeth Canning actually met with, and where.]