the first and second, and on a noise in the cattlehouse, ran out to know what had occasioned it. The nurse was the only person, excepting the woman in the straw, who stayed in the house, nor was she detained through care, or want of curiosity, but by the bonds of sleep, having drunk a little too plentifully the preceding day. The mother, who was broad awake, saw her child lifted. out of the bed, and carried out of the chamber, though she could not see any person touch it; on which she cried out as loud as she could, Nurse! nurse! my child! my child is taken away! but the old woman was too fast [asleep] to be awakened by the noise she made, and the infant was irretrievably gone. When her husband, and those who had accompanied him, returned, they found her wringing her hands, and uttering the most piteous lamentations for the loss of her child; on which, said the husband, looking into the bed, The woman is mad; do not you see the child lies by you? On which she turned, and saw, indeed, something like a child, but far different from her own, which was a very beautiful, fat, well-featured babe; whereas, what was now in the room of it was a poor, lean, withered, deformed creature. It lay quite naked, but the clothes belonging to the child that was exchanged for it lay wrapt up altogether on the bed.
