should take place. He also called the magistrate's attention
to a report, that he, the Sheriff-depute, intended to judge in the case
himself; "a thing of too great difficulty to be tried without very
deliberate advice, and beyond the jurisdiction of an inferior court."
The Sheriff-depute sends, with his apology, the _precognition_[83] of
the affair, which is one of the most nonsensical in this nonsensical
department of the law. A certain carpenter, named William Montgomery,
was so infested with cats, which, as his servant-maid reported, "spoke
among themselves," that he fell in a rage upon a party of these animals
which had assembled in his house at irregular hours, and betwixt his
Highland arms of knife, dirk, and broadsword, and his professional
weapon of an axe, he made such a dispersion that they were quiet for the
night. In consequence of his blows, two witches were said to have died.
The case of a third, named Nin-Gilbert, was still more remarkable. Her
leg being broken, the injured limb withered, pined, and finally fell
off; on which the hag was enclosed in prison, where she also died; and
the question which remained was, whether any process should be directed
against persons whom, in her compelled confession, she had, as usual,
informed against. The Lord Advocate, as may be supposed, quashed all
further procedure.

[Footnote 83: The _precognition_ is the record of the preliminary
evidence on which the public officers charged in Scotland with duties
entrusted to a grand jury in England, incur the responsibility of
sending an accused person to trial.]

In 1720, an unlucky boy, the third son of James, Lord Torphichen, took
it into his head, under instructions, it is said, from a knavish
governor, to play the possessed and bewitched person, laying the cause
of his distress on certain old witches in Calder, near to which village
his father had his mansion. The women were imprisoned, and one or two of
them died; but the Crown counsel would not proceed to trial. The noble
family also began to see through the cheat. The boy was sent to sea, and
though he is said at one time to have been disposed to try his fits
while on board, when the discipline of the navy proved too severe for
his cunning, in process of time he became a good sailor, assisted
gallantly in defence of the vessel against the pirates of Angria, and
finally was drowned in a storm.

In the year 1722, a Sheriff-depute of Sutherland, Captain David Ross of