‘When the men got there they saw a light in one of her windows, a small candle flame, and they split up into two groups and circled the house to see if they could see anything through the windows. One group approached through the front field, and the other went around the back.

‘It was the second group that made the discovery. Obviously, no one knows exactly what happened or what those men really found except the men themselves, and they’re long dead. But the story goes that they discovered a circle of old stones in the field behind Miss Brown’s cottage, and in the middle of those stones was a dead rabbit with its eyes removed. Apparently, the belly had been slit from the neck down, and its entrails were spread around inside the circle.

‘Well anyway, a couple of the men wanted to break down the door and drag Miss Brown out right then and there, but they were outnumbered by the others. It’s worth remembering that although all this happened a long time in the past it wasn’t the 17th century anymore, and as I mentioned before many of the laws made against witchcraft had been repealed by the 1800s. Lynch mobs and vigilante crimes weren’t brushed off in the same way as they had been a hundred or two hundred years before.

‘So the men decided to play it safe. They came back to the village, back to the Horse and Hare where there were still a few people sitting around and drinking – although not the farmer’s wife; she was long gone by then – and they reported what they’d found. After what the people had been hearing all evening about Brown and the state they’d worked themselves up into, no one questioned them.’

Mr Stevens paused. He reached under his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then repositioned them on his nose and stared around at the boys. He seemed to be measuring each of them in turn, as if making doubly sure they were ready to hear what he had to say next. James realised he could no longer hear anyone else talking around the campsite. The lights had all gone out in the surrounding tents, and the only sound left was the wind.

‘It was her uncle that found her, in the end,’ said Mr Stevens. ‘The story goes he came out of his house early the next morning to see to his morning chores and, when he couldn’t find Emily, he walked over to her cottage to wake her up. Only she wasn’t in her cottage.