Macpherson thought the figure was "a real living man," a brother of
Donald Farquharson's. He therefore rose and followed his visitor to
the door, where the ghost indicated the position of his bones, and
said that Donald Farquharson would help to inter them. Macpherson
next day found the bones, and spoke to Growar, the man of the tartan
coat (as Growar admitted at the trial). Growar said if Macpherson did
not hold his tongue, he himself would inform Shaw of Daldownie.
Macpherson therefore went straight to Daldownie, who advised him to
bury the bones privily, not to give the country a bad name for a rebel
district. While Macpherson was in doubt, and had not yet spoken to
Farquharson, the ghost revisited him at night and repeated his
command. He also denounced his murderers, Clerk and Macdonald, which
he had declined to do on his first appearance. He spoke in Gaelic,
which, it seems, was a language not known by the sergeant.

Isobel MacHardie, in whose service Macpherson was, deponed that one
night in summer, June, 1750, while she lay at one end of the sheiling
(a hill hut for shepherds or neatherds) and Macpherson lay at the
other, "she saw something naked come in at the door, which frighted
her so much that she drew the clothes over her head. That when it
appeared it came in in a bowing posture, and that next morning she
asked Macpherson what it was that had troubled them in the night
before. To which he answered that she might be easy, for it would not
trouble them any more."

All this was in 1750, but Clerk and Macdonald were not arrested till
September, 1753. They were then detained in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh
on various charges, as of wearing the kilt, till June, 1754, when they
were tried, Grant of Prestongrange prosecuting, aided by Haldane, Home
and Dundas, while Lockhart and Mackintosh defended. It was proved
that Clerk's wife wore Davies's ring, that Clerk, after the murder,
had suddenly become relatively rich and taken a farm, and that the two
men, armed, were on the hill near the scene of the murder on 28th
September, 1749. Moreover, Angus Cameron swore that he saw the murder
committed. His account of his position was curious. He and another
Cameron, since dead, were skulking near sunset in a little hollow on
the hill of Galcharn. There he had skulked all day, "waiting for
Donald Cameron, _who was afterwards hanged_, together with some of the
said Donald's companions from Lochaber". No doubt t