All this of Nash is, so far, the better evidence, as next day,
February 1, 1753, when a most tumultuous popular investigation of the
supposed house of captivity was made, he says that he and others,
finding the dungeon not to be square, small, and darkish, but a long,
narrow slit of a loft, half full of hay, expressed disbelief. Yet it
was proved that he went on suggesting to Lyon, Elizabeth's master,
that people should give money to Elizabeth, and 'wished him success.'
The proof was a letter of his, dated February 10, 1753. Also, Nash,
and two like-minded friends, hearing Elizabeth perjure herself, as
they thought, at the trial of Mrs. Wells (whom Elizabeth never
mentioned to Chitty), did not give evidence against her--on the most
absurdly flimsy excuses. One man was so horrified that, in place of
denouncing the perjury, he fled incontinent! Another went to a dinner,
and Nash to Goldsmiths' Hall, to his duties as butler. Such was then
the vigour of their scepticism.

On the other hand, at the trial in 1754 the neighbours reported
Elizabeth's tale as told on the night when she came home, more dead
than alive. Mrs. Myers had known Elizabeth for eleven years, 'a very
sober, honest girl as any in England.' Mrs. Myers found her livid, her
fingers 'stood crooked;' Mrs. Canning, Mrs. Woodward, and Polly Lyon
were then present, and Mrs. Myers knelt beside Elizabeth to hear her
story. It was as Chitty gave it, till the point where she was carried
into a house. The 'several persons' there, she said, were 'an elderly
woman and two young ones.' Her stays were cut by the old woman. She
was then thrust upstairs into a room, wherein was _hay_, _a pitcher of
water_, and bread in pieces. Bread may have been brought in, water
too, while she slept, a point never noted in the trials. She 'heard
the name of Mother Wills, or Wells, mentioned.'

Now Scarrat, in 1754, said that he, being present on January 29, 1753,
and hearing of the house, 'offered to bet a guinea to a farthing that
it was Mother Wells's.' But Mrs. Myers believed that Elizabeth had
mentioned hearing that name earlier; and Mrs. Myers must have heard
Scarrat, if he suggested it, before Elizabeth named it. The point is
uncertain.

Mrs. Woodward was in Mrs. Canning's room a quarter of an hour after
Elizabeth's arrival. The girl said she was almost starved to death in
a house on the Hertfordshire road, which she knew by seeing the
Hertford coach, with which she was familiar,