ware, smuggled nankin and other stuffs. Alice Farnham recognised the
gipsies, whom she had seen after New Christmas (new style). 'They said
they would come to see me after the Old Christmas holidays'--which is
unlikely!

Lucy Squires, the daughter, was clean, well dressed, and, _teste_ Mr.
Davy, she was pretty. She was not called.

George Squires was next examined. He had been well tutored as to what
he did _after_ December 29, but could not tell where he was on
Christmas Day, four days earlier! His memory only existed from the
hour when he arrived at Mrs. Hopkins's inn, at South Parrot (December
29, 1752). His own counsel must have been amazed; but in
cross-examination Mr. Morton showed that, for all time up to December
29, 1752, George's memory was an utter blank. On January 1, George
dined, he said, at Abbotsbury, with one Clarke, a sweetheart of his
sister. They had two boiled fowls. But Clarke said they had only 'a
part of a fowl between them.' There was such a discrepancy of evidence
here as to time on the part of one of the gipsy's witnesses that Mr.
Davy told him he was drunk. Yet he persisted that he kissed Lucy
Squires, at an hour when Lucy, to suit the case, could not have been
present.

There was documentary evidence--a letter of Lucy to Clarke, from
Basingstoke. It was dated January 18, 1753, but the figure after 175
was torn off the postmark; that was the only injury to the letter. Had
there not been a battalion of as hard swearers to the presence of the
gipsies at Enfield in December-January 1752-1753 as there was to their
absence from Enfield and to their presence in Dorset, the gipsy party
would have proved their case. As matters stand, we must remember that