His study still continued, for his head was still bent, and he
looked neither to the right nor to the left. In a single instant, he was
muffled up in a large cloak, a hood thrown over his face, and his hands
firmly bound by a cord. The operation was that of a moment--finished
before the prisoner's astonishment had left him power to open his mouth.
A whistle brought up the horses; he was placed on one of them with the
same rapidity; a cord was passed round his loins and bound to the
saddle; and, in a few minutes, the party was in rapid motion to get to
the back part of the city.[E]

[E] This famous abduction was reported by Lord Fountainhall.
Every circumstance is literally true.--ED.

During all this extraordinary operation, not a single word passed
between the three rievers, to whom the proceeding was, in a great
degree, perfectly familiar. Through the folds of the hood of the
cloak in which the President's head was much more snugly lodged than
it ever was in his senatorial wig, he contrived to send forth some
muffled sounds, indicating, not unnaturally, a wish to know what was
the meaning and object of so extraordinary a manoeuvre. At that time,
be it understood, the belief in the power of witches was general, and
Durie himself had been accessary to the condemnation of many a wise
woman who was committed to the flames; but though he had, to a great
extent, emancipated his strong mind from the thraldom of the prevailing
prejudice, the mode in which he was now seized--in broad day, in the
midst of a legal study, without seeing a single individual (his head
being covered first), and without hearing the sound of man's
voice--would have been sufficient to bring him back to the general
belief, and force the conviction that he was now in the hands of the
agents of the Devil. It is, indeed, a fact (afterwards ascertained),
that the learned judge did actually conceive that he was now in the
power of those he had helped to persecute; and his fears--bringing up
before him the burning tar-barrels, the paid prickers, the roaring
crowds, and the expiring victim--completed the delusion, and bound
up his energies, till he was speechless and motionless. There was,
therefore, no cause of apprehension from the terror-struck prisoner
himself; and, as the party scoured along, they told every inquiring
passenger on the way (for they were obliged, in some places, to ask the
road) that they were carrying an auld lurdon to Dumfries, to be