s the cause of her being detained at Sandy-Knowe. This
rose, I suppose, to a sort of delirious affection, for she confessed
to old Alison Wilson, the housekeeper, that she had carried me up to
the Craigs, meaning, under a strong temptation of the Devil, to cut my
throat with her scissors, and bury me in the moss. Alison instantly
took possession of my person, and took care that her confidant should
not be subject to any farther temptation so far as I was concerned.
She was dismissed, of course, and I have heard became afterwards a
lunatic.

It is here at Sandy-Knowe, in the residence of my paternal
grandfather, already mentioned, that I have the first consciousness of
existence; and I recollect distinctly that my situation and appearance
were a little whimsical. Among the odd remedies recurred to to aid my
lameness, some one had recommended that so often as a sheep was killed
for the use of the family, I should be stripped, and swathed up in the
skin, warm as it was flayed from the carcase {p.014} of the animal.
In this Tartar-like habiliment I well remember lying upon the floor of
the little parlor in the farmhouse, while my grandfather, a venerable
old man with white hair, used every excitement to make me try to
crawl. I also distinctly remember the late Sir George MacDougal of
Makerstoun, father of the present Sir Henry Hay MacDougal, joining in
this kindly attempt. He was, God knows how,[25] a relation of ours,
and I still recollect him in his old-fashioned military habit (he had
been colonel of the Greys), with a small cocked hat, deeply laced, an
embroidered scarlet waistcoat, and a light-colored coat, with
milk-white locks tied in a military fashion, kneeling on the ground
before me, and dragging his watch along the carpet to induce me to
follow it. The benevolent old soldier and the infant wrapped in his
sheepskin would have afforded an odd group to uninterested spectators.
This must have happened about my third year, for Sir George MacDougal
and my grandfather both died shortly after that period.

[Footnote 25: He was a second cousin of my grandfather's.
Isobel MacDougal, wife of Walter, the first Laird of Raeburn,
and mother of Walter Scott, called Beardie, was grand-aunt, I
take it, to the late Sir George MacDougal. There was always
great friendship between us and the Makerstoun family. It
singularly happened, that at the burial of the late Sir Henry