Judge Bride: One more thing you shall tell us, although you are not a likely witness. Is it true, as your mother has said, that you shot silver bullets up the fire hole, and that upon occasion you think you struck the accused?
Thumb: It is true, sir, but I shot only three silver bullets—these were buttons from my coat. My sisters cried, ‘There she goes up the flue.’ I fired where they pointed and they exclaimed that I had struck her on the wrist. Some here will tell you that there was indeed the next day a bullet-gouge on her wrist, nor has it yet healed—to this day. I saw it when you bade me look at her. You may see this mark yourself. Her apparition came commonly to afflict my sisters in an old black riding-hood.
Captain Buzzey said he had the very one with him in the bundle at their honours’ feet. He took it out, and Labour and Sorrow both said, yes, it was the very one. Captain Buzzey held it up before the magistrates. It was riddled with bullet holes.
Captain Buzzey: Widow Bilby gave me this coat. See, it is burnt with fire, shot full of holes as a sieve, and still smells of soot from the Thumb chimney, and gunpowder from Thumb’s musket.
A boy (crying out from the back of the court): I know that coat, sir, well.
Judge Bride: And who may you be?
The boy: Jake Tulley, bonded man to Widow Bilby, and I know that coat for the one our scarecrow has worn these three years, and but yesterday I saw the coat gone and the scarecrow naked. Mate and I (that is the other farmhand) often shot at it for practice. Why, it means nothing that it is full of holes.
Judge Bride: And are you and Mate such miserable poor shots you must press your pieces into the very belly of the scarecrow to be assured of your aim? Look, how the powder has burned the cloth.
The Judges took the coat up between them and discussed in low voices. Jake sat down in confusion.
Judge Bride: Mr. Kleaver, you have already given generously of your knowledge. You have told us in what way the maladies arising from witchcraft differ from those arising from the proper body—in other words, what are the differences between diseases inflicted by the Devil for wicked ends, and those by Jehovah for our own good. And you have told us how you came to recognize the case in hand as one provoked by art. Will you tell us further?