nd
child-like innocence of nature. When she heard that she was accused,
Margaret--who had been advised to get out of the way for a time, but who
had answered disdainfully, "Let them quake that dread and fear that need,
but I will not gang"--went up straight to Bargarran house, and passing
into the chamber where Christian lay, put her arms round her and spoke to
her soothingly, saying, "The Lord bless thee and ding the devil frae
thee!" She then asked her pointedly if she had ever seen her among her
tormentors?--to which the girl said. "No, but she had seen her daughter
Martha." Afterwards she retracted this admission and said that Margaret
had really afflicted her, but that she was under a spell when asked and
could not confess. Martha could not take things so gently. "She was as
well-Favoured and Gentill a Lass as you'l look on, and about 17 or 18
years of Age," says an old authority in an anonymous letter written to a
couple of initials. Poor Martha! her youth and beauty and passionate
distress moved even the bigoted wretches who condemned her; but their
compassion led to nothing pitiful or merciful, and the poor, bright,
beautiful girl passed into the awful doom of the rest. Then the
authorities "questioned" the witches; they were pricked, according to
custom and the national law; and "There was not any of them, save Margaret
Fulton, but marks were found on them, which were altogether insensible.
That a Needle of 3 Inches length was frequently put in without their
knowledge, nor would any Blood come from these places." Elizabeth
Anderson, a girl of seventeen, a beggar, James Lindsay, of fourteen, and
gley'd Thomas, his brother, not yet twelve--who for a halfpenny would turn
himself widershins and stop a plough at a word--were found willing and
able to confess. Elizabeth Anderson was especially determined that things
should not be lost for the want of finding. She said that about twenty
days ago her father had told her to go with him to Bargarran's yard,
somewhere about noon, where they met a black man with a bonnet on his
head, and a band round his neck, whom her father and Agnes Naismith, then
present, told her was the devil: that certain people, named, were also in
their company; that their discourse was all of Christian Shaw, then lying
sick, "whose Life they all promis'd to take away by the stopping of her
Breath;" that they all danced in the yard; that her father "Discharged
her to tell anything she saw, or she wo