Coming later into his own yard, the informant saw a black thing proportioned like a cat, only that it was thrice as big, sitting on a strawberry bed and fixing its luminous eyes on him. But when he ran towards it, it suddenly leaped over the palings and ran towards the informant as he thought, but instead, it fled through the yard with his greyhound in hot pursuit after it to a great gate which was ‘underset with a pair of tumbrell strings,’ and it did throw the said gate wide open and then vanished. And the said greyhound returned to the informant shaking and trembling exceedingly.

Sterne gave evidence on the same day, and much to the same effect, but said that the white imp was like a cat but not so big, and when he asked Elizabeth whether she was not afraid of her imps she answered, “What! Do you think I am afraid of my children?” and she called the imp Jarmara as having red spots, and spoke of two more called Sack and Sugar. Four other witnesses confirmed the story practically in its entirety.

Elizabeth Clarke herself gave evidence of them, and said Anne West had sent her a ‘thing like a little kitlyn,’ which would obtain food for her. Two or three nights after this promise, a white thing came to her in the night, and the night after a grey one spoke to her and said it would do her no hurt and would help her to get a husband.

A promise in the shadows: black molasses, cinnamon bark, and glowing amber.