was no doubt of the fact, let who would deny it.
Lord Torphichen's son though he was, the Honourable Patrick Sandilands was
worse holden than the meanest hind on the estate. He was buffeted about
the room; flung down in trances, from which no horsewhippings--and it is
to be hoped he had plenty of them, and well laid on--could revive him; he
pronounced prophecies; was lifted up in the air; taken off long journeys
between the space of two flashes of light; had the gift of clairvoyance;
and put out all the candles by his very presence--his powers depending, as
such powers generally do, on darkness and confusion for their perfect
development. Lord Torphichen soon left off the use of the horsewhip, and
he and all the family came to the conclusion that the Honourable Patrick
was bewitched. So they got hold of the witch, a brutish, ignorant,
half-witted woman living in the village of Calder, and put her in prison,
waiting her confession. As for that, it was not difficult to get at. Yes,
she was a witch; had been a witch for many years; had once given the devil
her own dead child to make a roast of; had made an image of the young
laird; and had three associates, two women and a man. Mad William
Mitchell, the Tinklarian Doctor,[77] as he was called, went on foot in ill
weather without food from the West Bow to Lord Torphichen's house at
Calder, to see what he could do towards discovering the devil in the
witches. This was on the 14th of January--the day of the solemn fast,
which was all the help that the awakening reason of the times would allow
the Honourable Patrick Sandilands. True, the witch and her confederates
were in prison, but there was no gallows planted, and no fire set: only
the ministers, and elders, and saints, and people, convened in solemn and
sacred prayer, to beseech God to drive out the devil from a lying,
mischievous, hysterical lad. But crazy William Mitchell took very little
by this move, Lord Torphichen not favouring his pretensions to special and
private illumination. The sermon was preached in the Calder Kirk by the
Rev. Mr. John Wilkie, minister of Uphall, the sorcerers being present, and
was found so powerful that the devil was fairly exorcised, and the boy
soon after wholly recovered. In time he went to sea, rose to the command
of an East Indiaman, but perished in a storm, leaving a meritorious name
singularly stained with boyish sins. "It brings us strangely near to this
wild-looking affair," says Chamb