aspect alarmed her, but whose wisdom took the form of advising her to
go on advertising. It was later rumoured that he said the girl was in
the hands of 'an old black woman,' and would return; but Mrs. Canning
admitted nothing of all this. Sceptics, with their usual acuteness,
maintained that the disappearance was meant to stimulate charity, and
that the mother knew where the daughter was; or, on the other hand,
the daughter had fled to give birth to a child in secret, or for
another reason incident to 'the young and gay,' as one of the counsel
employed euphemistically put the case. The medical evidence did not
confirm these suggestions. Details are needless, but these theories
were certainly improbable. The character of La Pucelle was not more
stainless than Elizabeth's.

About 10.15 P.M. on January 29, on the Eve of the Martyrdom of King
Charles--as the poor women dated it--Mrs. Canning was on her knees,
praying--so said her apprentice--that she might behold even if it were
but an apparition of her daughter; such was her daily prayer. It was
as in Wordsworth's _Affliction of Margaret_:

I look for ghosts, but none will force
Their way to me; 'tis falsely said
That ever there was intercourse
Between the living and the dead!

At that moment there was a sound at the door. The 'prentice opened it,
and was aghast; the mother's prayer seemed to be answered, for there,
bleeding, bowed double, livid, ragged, with a cloth about her head,
and clad in a dirty dressing-jacket and a filthy draggled petticoat,
was Elizabeth Canning. She had neglected her little brother that
'huffed her' on New Year's Day, but she had been thinking of him, and