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[1: In the seventeenth century belief in witchcraft was almost at its height over the whole of Europe, and in Scotland the hunt after witches and warlocks was peculiarly vindictive. To obtain confession, the most incredible tortures–as cruel as anything practised by Red Indians on their prisoners–were inflicted on accused persons, men and women, and escape was seldom possible for these poor creatures. Nor were such beliefs and practices confined to the benighted times of the seventeenth century. Even as late as 1722, in Sutherlandshire, a woman was burned for witchcraft. Her crime was that she had transformed her own daughter into a pony, and had ridden her throughout an entire night. Conclusive proof of the charge was found in the fact that the poor woman’s daughter was lame afterwards both in hands and feet.

Nothing was too absurd, no charge too wicked or too childish, to obtain universal belief in those times.]

Meantime, bound to the saddle in front of his captor, by little-known hill paths the judge had been borne swiftly through the night. The long, melancholy wail of a whaup, the eerie hoot of an owl, at times smote dully on his ear; but to all his entreaties and his questions no human voice made answer; in stony silence his abductor rode steadily on. Over hill and dale, over rough ground and smooth, splashing through marshy soil where the hoofs of the heavily laden horse sucked juicily, through burns, and across sodden peaty moor where the smell of swamp rose rank on the night air, they floundered; and once the homely smell of peat reek told the unhappy judge that they passed within hail of some human dwelling. But throughout the night he saw nothing, and gradually the long strain, the discomfort of being pitched forward or back as the horse scrambled up or down where the ground was extra rough and broken, the pain of sitting half in, half out, of a saddle, told upon a frame unaccustomed to much exercise, and at intervals he wholly or partially lost consciousness. Thus unutterably distressed in body and broken in spirit, in one of these partial lapses it seemed to the judge–as it might be in some disordered nightmare–that there came a respite from the torment of ceaseless motion, and that by means of some unknown agency he lay in heavenly peace, stretched full length on a couch or bed. He thought–or did he dream?–that he had heard, as it were far off, the muffled trairip of feet and the murmur of low voices; and it seemed almost as if his body, after falling from some vast height, had been lifted and gently swung in the air. But exhaustion of mind and body was so great that the problem of what might be happening was quite beyond solution; let him only rest and sleep.

Then, later, it seemed to him that he woke from broken, tossing slumber. But it was dark, and he fell again into an uneasy doze, in which every muscle and bone in his harassed old body ached pitifully, every spot of sorely chafed skin stung and burned, till the multitude of pains put an end to sleep. Where was he, and how had he got there? On a low couch, free and unbound, he lay; by his side, on a rude table, was food and a jack of small-beer. Whether the time was morning or evening he could not tell, but it was very dark; what little light entered the room came through a narrow slit, high up in the wall, and all things smelled strangely of damp. Somewhere he could hear faintly a slow, shuffling step and the rustle of a dress; then the mew of a cat. Where was he?

Few, very few, persons at that day were above the weakness of a firm belief in witchcraft; even a judge of the Court of Session would not dare openly to question the justice and humanity of the Mosaical law: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Superstition was rampant, and to Lord Durie there had ever seemed nothing incongruous in accepting belief in the undoubted existence of both witches and warlocks. Could it be that he was now actually in the power of such beings? His mind was yet in a whirl, and he could form to himself no connected account of yesterday’s happenings, if indeed it was really yesterday, and not in some remote, far-away time, that he had last ridden along the sands of Leith. Thirst consumed him, but he hesitated to drink; if he were now in the hands of those wretches who, it was well known, that they might work evil sold themselves to the Prince of Darkness, then might it not be that by voluntarily drinking, his soul would be delivered into the clutches of the Evil One? The thought brought him painfully to his feet with many a groan, and roused him to a careful examination of his gloomy prison. Rough stone walls, oozing damp, an earthen floor, three stone steps leading up to a heavy iron-studded door in a corner of the room; and nothing else. The one small window was far out of his reach. A feeling of faintness crept over him; it might be a wile of Satan, or a spell cast over him by supernatural powers, but the time was past for hesitation, and he drank a great draught from the jack, sank feebly on the couch, and slept profoundly.