tremity of her anguish, she confessed that she was indeed a
witch--that she had sold her soul to the devil, and effected all her
cures by his aid. This was something new in the witch creed, according
to which, the devil delighted more in laying diseases on, than in
taking them off; but Gellie Duncan fared no better on that account. The
torture was still applied, until she had named all her accomplices,
among whom were one Cunningham, a reputed wizard, known by the name of
Dr. Fian, a grave and matron-like witch, named Agnes Sampson, Euphemia
Macalzean, the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, already mentioned, and
nearly forty other persons, some of whom were the wives of respectable
individuals in the city of Edinburgh. Every one of these persons was
arrested, and the whole realm of Scotland thrown into commotion by the
extraordinary nature of the disclosures which were anticipated.

About two years previous to this time, James had suddenly left his
kingdom, and proceeded gallantly to Denmark, to fetch over his bride,
the Princess of Denmark, who had been detained by contrary weather in
the harbour of Upslo. After remaining for some months in Copenhagen, he
set sail with his young bride, and arrived safely in Leith, on the 1st
of May 1590, having experienced a most boisterous passage, and been
nearly wrecked. As soon as the arrest of Gellie Duncan and Fian became
known in Scotland, it was reported by everybody who pretended to be
well-informed that these witches and their associates had, by the
devil's means, raised the storms which had endangered the lives of the
King and Queen. Gellie, in her torture, had confessed that such was the
fact, and the whole kingdom waited aghast and open-mouthed for the
corroboration about to be furnished by the trial.

Agnes Sampson, the "grave and matron-like" witch implicated by Gellie
Duncan, was put to the horrible torture of the pilliewinkis. She laid
bare all the secrets of the sisterhood before she had suffered an hour,
and confessed that Gellie Duncan, Dr. Fian, Marion Lineup, Euphemia
Macalzean, herself, and upwards of two hundred witches and warlocks,
used to assemble at midnight in the kirk of North Berwick, where they
met the devil; that they had plotted there to attempt the King's life;
that they were incited to this by the old fiend himself, who had
asserted with a thundering oath that James was the greatest enemy he
ever had, and that there would be no peace for the devil's chi