conveyed his friends a far way off, and came home that way again, where he supped.  After supper, taking his horse and crossing Tyne water to go home, he rides through a shady piece of a haugh, commonly called Allers, and the evening being somewhat dark, he met with some persons there that begat a dreadful consternation in him, which for the most part he would never reveal.  This was malum secutum.  When he came home the servants observed terror and fear in his countenance.  The next day he became distracted, and was bound for several days.  His sister, the Lady Samuelston, hearing of it, was heard say, ’Surely that knave Hatteraick is the cause of his trouble; call for him in all haste.’  When he had come to her, ‘Sandie,’ says she, ’what is this you have done to my brother William?’ ‘I told him,’ says he, ’I should make him repent of his striking me at the yait lately.’  She, giving the rogue fair words, and promising him his pockful of meal, with beef and cheese, persuaded the fellow to cure him again.  He undertook the business.  ‘But I must first,’ says he, ‘have one of his sarks’ (shirts), which was soon gotten.  What pranks he played with it cannot be known, but within a short while the gentleman recovered his health.  When Hatteraick came to receive his wages he told the lady, ’Your brother William shall quickly go off the country, but shall never return,’ She, knowing the fellow’s prophecies to hold true, caused the brother to make a disposition to her of all his patrimony, to the defrauding of his younger brother, George.  After that this warlock had abused the country for a long time, he was at last apprehended at Dunbar, and brought into Edinburgh, and burnt upon the Castlehill."[74]

[Footnote 73:  Or Scottish wandering beggar.]

[Footnote 74:  Sinclair’s “Satan’s Invisible World Discovered,” p. 98.]

Now, if Hatteraick was really put to death on such evidence, it is worth while to consider what was its real amount.  A hot-tempered swaggering young gentleman horsewhips a beggar of ill fame for loitering about the gate of his sister’s house.  The beggar grumbles, as any man would.  The young man, riding in the night, and probably in liquor, through a dark shady place, is frightened by, he would not, and probably could not, tell what, and has a fever fit.  His sister employs the wizard to take off the spell according to his profession; and here is damnum minatum, et malum secutum, and all legal cause for burning a man to ashes!  The vagrant Hatteraick probably knew something of the wild young man which might soon oblige him to leave the country; and the selfish Lady Samuelston, learning the probability of his departure, committed a fraud which ought to have rendered her evidence inadmissible.