from the cavern, rung among the hills.
Such were the obsequies which Scotchmen, resigning the nature of man,
amidst unheard-of agonies, celebrated over the corpses of their
countrymen.

These things reached the ears of government; and an armed force was
despatched to the hills to seize the cannibals. Several of them were
caught; but Christie and some others escaped, and were never captured.
The bones of their victims were collected, and conveyed to Perth; where,
upon being counted, it appeared that they had killed no fewer than
thirty travellers. From these transactions sprung that name,
Christiecleek, which is so familiar to the ears of Scotchmen.
"Christiecleek! Christiecleek!" became instantly the national nursery
bugbear. No child would cry after the charmed name escaped from the lips
of the nurse; and even old people shuddered at the mention of a term
which produced ideas so revolting to human nature, and so derogatory of
Scottish character.

Now it is said that, some time after the performance of the dreadful
tragedy we have narrated, an old man in the town of Dumfries, who had
three children by his wife, quarrelled her often for the use of a term
intended simply to pacify her children when they cried, but which he
declared was too much even for his ears. He was a respectable merchant,
had earned a considerable sum of money by his trade, and was reputed a
most godly man, attending divine service regularly, and performing all
the domestic duties with order and great suavity of manner. His
neighbours looked up to him with love and respect, and solicited his
counsel in their difficulties. His name--David Maxwell--was applauded in
the neighbourhood, and he received great sympathy from all who knew him,
in consequence of having, as was reported, lost an only brother among
Christiecleek's victims--a fact he had concealed from his wife, till her
use of the name compelled him to mention it to her, but which afterwards
came to be well known.

The silence of the mother had, however, no effect upon the urchins, who,
the more they were requested to cease terrifying each other by their
national _terriculamentum_, "Christiecleek," the more terrible it
appeared to them, and the more they used it. If they abstained from the
use of the word in the presence of their parents, they were the more
ready to have recourse to it in the passages of the house, and in the
dark rooms, and wherever the dreaded being might be supposed to be