wer of a spaeman, came to the residence
of Tran, the provost, and dropped explicit hints that the ship was lost,
and that the good woman of the house was a widow. The sad truth was
afterwards learned on more certain information. Two of the seamen, after
a space of doubt and anxiety, arrived, with the melancholy tidings that
the bark, of which John Dein was skipper and Provost Tran part owner,
had been wrecked on the coast of England, near Padstow, when all on
board had been lost, except the two sailors who brought the notice.
Suspicion of sorcery, in those days easily awakened, was fixed on
Margaret Barclay, who had imprecated curses on the ship, and on John
Stewart, the juggler, who had seemed to know of the evil fate of the
voyage before he could have become acquainted with it by natural means.

Stewart, who was first apprehended, acknowledged that Margaret Barclay,
the other suspected person, had applied to him to teach her some magic
arts, "in order that she might get gear, kye's milk, love of man, her
heart's desire on such persons as had done her wrong, and, finally, that
she might obtain the fruit of sea and land." Stewart declared that he
denied to Margaret that he possessed the said arts himself, or had the
power of communicating them. So far was well; but, true or false, he
added a string of circumstances, whether voluntarily declared or
extracted by torture, which tended to fix the cause of the loss of the
bark on Margaret Barclay. He had come, he said, to this woman's house in
Irvine, shortly after the ship set sail from harbour. He went to
Margaret's house by night, and found her engaged, with other two women,
in making clay figures; one of the figures was made handsome, with fair
hair, supposed to represent Provost Tran. They then proceeded to mould a
figure of a ship in clay, and during this labour the devil appeared to
the company in the shape of a handsome black lap-dog, such as ladies use
to keep.[80] He added that the whole party left the house together, and
went into an empty waste-house nearer the seaport, which house he
pointed out to the city magistrates. From this house they went to the
sea-side, followed by the black lap-dog aforesaid, and cast in the
figures of clay representing the ship and the men; after which the sea
raged, roared, and became red like the juice of madder in a dyer's
cauldron.

[Footnote 80: This may remind the reader of Cazotte's "Diable
Amoureux."]

This confession havin