d, she had
said, was embarrassed with this big black horse, and asked what he should
do with it? to which she had answered, "Cast his bridle on his neck and
you will be quit of him." So the horse flew off overhead with a great
noise, and Beatrix Laing's startled husband for the first time understood
its real character.

In revenge at her obduracy the magistrates "put her in the stocks, and
then carried her to the Thieves' Hole, and from that transported her to a
dark dungeon, where she was allowed no manner of light, or human converse;
and in this condition she lay for five months." All this while the
magistrates of the burgh were pressing on the Privy Council the absolute
need of trying her; but the Earl of Balcarres and Lord Anstruther, two
members of the council connected with the district, interposed their
influence, and got the poor creature set at liberty;--"brought her off as
a dreamer," says the anonymous pamphlet angrily. But she was forced to
turn her face from Pittenweem, and "wandered about in strange places, in
the extremity of hunger and cold, though she had a competency at home, but
dared not come near her own house," for fear of the fury and rage of the
people: dying at last "undesired" in her bed at St. Andrews.

Beatrix was wandering about in strange places, safe if sorrowful, but
Alexander Macgregor clinched her muttered charge against Janet Cornfoot by
accusing her of perpetually haunting him--she and two other witches, and
his Cloutieship along with them. They tormented him chiefly in the night
time, while he was sleeping in his bed. Janet, under torture confessed;
but retracted immediately after, saying that the minister himself had
beaten her with his staff to make her speak out: and there being
considerable doubt of her guilt in the minds of the gentry of the
district, even of the chastising minister himself, she was allowed to
escape, by connivance. But another minister of the neighbourhood, with
more zeal than humanity and more grace than knowledge, stopped her in her
flight, and sent her back to Pittenweem. There the mob got hold of her.
They had been fearfully excited by Beatrix Laing's acquittal and Janet's
escape, and they were not disposed to let this unexpected glut to their
vengeance go. They seized poor Janet Cornfoot, tied her up hard in a rope,
beat her unmercifully, then dragged her by the heels through the streets
and along the shore. "The appearance of a bailie for a brief space
d