There was a filthy kind
of bed, on which now slept a labourer and his wife, Fortune and Judith
Natus. Nash kept talking about the hay, and one Adamson rode to meet
Elizabeth, and came back saying that she said there _was_ hay. By
Adamson's account he only asked her, 'What kind of place was it?' and
she said, 'A wild kind of place with hay in it,' as in the neighbours'
version of her first narrative. Mrs. Myers, who was in the coach,
corroborated Adamson.
The point of the sceptics was that till Adamson rode back to her on
her way to Wells's house she had never mentioned hay. They argued that
Adamson had asked her, 'Was there hay in the room?' and that she,
taking the hint, had said 'Yes!' By May 1754 Adamson and Mrs. Myers,
who was in the cab with Elizabeth, would believe that Adamson had
asked 'What kind of place is it?' and that Elizabeth then spoke,
without suggestion, of the hay. The point would be crucial, but nobody
in 1754 appears to have remembered that on February 21, three weeks
after the event, at the trial of Mother Wells, Adamson had given
exactly the same evidence as in May 1754. 'I returned to meet her, and
asked her about the room.
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