zzled by what name to call her passion,
for she began to vomit strange things, which she said the witches, her
tormentors, forced upon her--such as crooked pins, small fowl bones,
sticks of candle fir, filthy hay, gravel stones, lumps of candle-grease,
and egg-shells. And still she cried out against Katherine Campbell and
Agnes Naismith; holding long conversations with the former, whom she
affirmed to be sitting close by when she was perhaps many miles away, and
arguing with her out of the Bible: exhorting her to repent of her sins
with more unction than logical clearness of reasoning. Agnes Naismith she
took somewhat into favour again; for the poor old woman, having been
brought by the parents into the chamber where she lay, and having prayed
for her a little simple prayer very heartily, the afflicted damsel
condescended to exempt her from further persecution for the moment, saying
that she was now her defender and did protect her from the fury of the
rest. For the crafty child had seen too well how her first venture had
sped not to venture on a broader cast. One day being in her fits she made
a grip with her hands as if to catch something, then exclaimed that J. P.
was then tormenting her, and that she had got a grip of his jerkin which
was "duddie" (tattered) at the elbows; and immediately her mother and
aunt heard the tearing of cloth, and the girl showed them in her hands two
pieces of red cloth newly torn, where never a bit of red cloth had been
before. Then she went off into a swoon or "swerf," and lay as if dead a
considerable time. These fits continued with more or less severity far
into the winter of the next year, and with ever new victims claimed by her
as her tormentors. Now it was Elizabeth Anderson; now James and Thomas
Lindsay--the latter a young lad of eleven, "the gley'd or squint-eyed
elf," as she called him; now "the scabbed-faced lass," who came to the
door to ask alms; and now the weary old Highland body, begging for a
night's lodging; then Alexander Anderson, father of Elizabeth; and Jean
Fulton, the grandmother; and then Margaret Lang--Pincht Margaret as she
was called--"a Name given her by the Devil, from a Pincht Cross cloath,
ordinarily worn on her Brow;" and her daughter, Martha Semple. Of the
twenty-one people accused by this wicked girl, Margaret Lang and her
daughter were the most remarkable--the one for her courage, her fine
character and powerful mind, the other for her youth, her beauty, a