I am engaged in this speculation by some occurrences that I met with
yesterday, which I shall give my reader an account of at large. As I was
walking with my friend Sir ROGER by the side of one of his woods, an old
woman applied herself to me for my charity. Her dress and figure put me
in mind of the following description in _Otway_.

_In a close lane as I pursu'd my journey,
I spy'd a wrinkled_ Hag, _with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself.
Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red;
Cold palsy shook her head; her hands seem'd withered;
And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapped
The tatter'd remnants of an old strip'd hanging,
Which serv'd to keep her carcase from the cold:
So there was nothing of a piece about her.
Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsly patch'd
With different-coloured rags, black, red, white, yellow,
And seem'd to speak variety of wretchedness._

As I was musing on this description, and comparing it with the object
before me, the Knight told me, that this very old woman had the
reputation of a witch all over the country, that her lips were observed
to be always in motion, and that there was not a switch about her house
which her neighbours did not believe had carried her several hundreds of
miles. If she chanced to stumble, they always found sticks or straws
that lay in the figure of a cross before her. If she made any mistake at
church, and cried _Amen_ in a wrong place, they never failed to
conclude that she was saying her prayers backwards. There was not a maid
in the parish that would take a pin of her, though she should offer a
bag of money with it. She goes by the name of _Moll White_, and has