aken his faith, and it was noticed that, towards the end of
his life, he was not fond of dwelling on the subject--had even been
known, in fact, to become irritable when pressed to tell his story. It
fell out, a year or two after the events which he had loved to narrate,
that Lord Durie had occasion to visit Dumfries. On the way back to
Edinburgh, travelling with some colleagues, it chanced that a heavy
storm caught them, and necessity drove them to take shelter for the
night in a farmhouse near to an old peel tower which stood on the verge
of the wild moorland country beyond Moffat.

That night Lord Durie, in his stuffy box-bed, dreamed a terrible dream.
He was once more in the power of the wizard or warlock; and it seemed to
him that in his dream he even heard again those mysterious words that
had once so haunted him. With a start he woke, bathed in perspiration,
to find that day had broken, and that from the hillside echoed the
long-drawn cry: "Far yaud! Far yaud! _Bauty!_" While, ben the house, he
could hear a slow, shuffling step, and a thin old voice quavering: "Hey,
Maudge!" to a mewing cat.

"What was yon cry oot on the hill? Oh, jist oor Ailick cryin' on his
dowg, Bauty, to weer the sheep," said the grey-haired, brown-faced old
woman to whom they had owed their shelter for the night.

"Veesitors?" she continued, in reply to further questions. "Na. We hae
nae veesitors here. There was aince a puir sick man lay twa three months
i' the auld tower yont by, a year or twa back, but there's been nae
veesitors. They said he was daft, an' I was kind o' feared whiles to gie
him his meat. But, oh, he wad be jist a silly auld body that did naebody
hairm. Na, I never richtly got sicht o' his face, for I aye put his bit
meat an' drink doon beside him whan he was sleepin'. An' them that
broucht him took him awa again whan they thoucht he was some better."

It was noted that after this visit Lord Durie no longer pursued the
subject of warlocks.

[NOTE.--The story of Lord Durie's abduction and captivity is differently
told by Chambers in his _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, as far, at least,
as the instigator of the kidnapping and its accomplisher are concerned.
It is there recorded that the maker of the plot to kidnap the judge was
George Meldrum the Younger of Dumbreck. Accompanied by two Jardines and
a Johnston--good Border names--and by some other men, Meldrum seized
Lord Durie and a friend near St. Andrews, robbed them of