grin at them like a dog, and as if he would swallow them up. He
would give them most beautiful money, at least to look at; but in
four-and-twenty hours it would be all gone, or changed to mere dirt and
rubbish. The devil wore sometimes boots and sometimes shoes, but ever his
feet were cloven, and ever his colour black. This, with some small
variations, was the sum of what Isobell Gowdie confessed in her four
depositions taken between the 13th of April and 27th of May in the year of
grace 1662.

Janet Braidhead, spous to John Taylor, followed next. Her first
confession, made on the 14th of April, set forth how that she had known
nothing of witchcraft until her husband and his mother, Elspeth Nishie,
had taught her; her first lesson from them being the making of some
"drugs" which were to charm away the fruit and corn, and kill the cattle,
of one John Hay in the Mure. After that, she was taken to the kirk at
Auldearne, where her husband presented her for the devil's baptism and
marking, which were done in the usual manner. She also gave evidence of
the clay picture which was to destroy all the male children of the Laird
of Park; and she gave a long list of the frequenters of the Sabbaths,
including some of the most respectable inhabitants of the place; and in
many other things she confirmed Isobell Gowdie's depositions, specially in
all regarding the devil and the unequivocal nature of their connection
with him, which was put into plain and unmistakable language enough.

We are not told the ultimate fate of Isobell Gowdie and Janet Braidhead,
but they had confessed enough to burn half Scotland, and it is not likely
that they escaped the doom assigned to their order.

THE SECRET SINS OF MAJOR WEIR.[57]

On the 4th of April, 1670, one Major Thomas Weir, an old man of seventy,
expiated his crimes on the Gallowlie of Edinburgh. A bad man, surely; a
canting, loose-lived hypocrite, who made his puritanism the cloak for his
secret crimes, serving sin with his body in daily and most detestable
service, while his lips spoke only of zeal to God and the soul's devoutest
exercise. Still, it was a terrible fate for nothing more heinous than an
unclean life; a purification by fire in truth, but not for the
sanctification of souls. Perhaps he would have got off altogether, had he
not been charged with witchcraft. Incest and the foulest vices were bad
enough, but witchcraft was worse. Yet no intelligible charge of sorcery
was broug