was
amissing, sent a party of men on the Sunday to Dubrach to search for
his body, and went with them for three or four following days, but
without any success: Depones, That in the month of June seventeen
hundred and fifty, the deponent was told by the people in his father's
house, that Alexander Macpherson, alias M'Gillas, had been there
inquiring for him, and wanted much to see him, and desired the deponent
would go to his master's sheilling in Glenconie, about two miles'
distance from Dubrach, and that he wanted much to speak to him: That
after some days the deponent went to him, when Macpherson told him that
he was greatly troubled with an apparition, the ghost of the deceased
Serjeant Davies, who insisted that he should bury his bones; and that
he having declined to bury them, the ghost insisted that he should
apply to the deponent, saying that he was sure Donald Farquharson would
help to bury his bones: That the deponent could not believe that he had
seen such an apparition, upon which Macpherson desired him to go along
with him, and he would show him the bones, and the place where he had
found them: That the deponent went along with him, which he did the
rather that he thought it might possibly be true, and if it was, he did
not know but the apparition might trouble himself: Depones, That they
accordingly found the bones in a peat-moss, where peats had been casten
above ground, and near to the top of a hill: That the place was distant
from Dubrach between two and three miles, between Glenchristie and
Glenconie, and about half a mile from the road the patroling parties
commonly take from Dubrach to Glenshee: That the spot where the body
was lying had the surface of the ground entire, and no peats had been
casten there: That the flesh had been mostly consumed from the bones,
and the head separated from the body, and the hair lying by itself,
separated from the head; and depones, that the hair was of the same
colour with the Serjeant's hair, a mouse colour: That they also found
some blue cloth, all torn in rags, some of it under the body, and some
of it lying by the body; and it appeared to the deponent to be of the
same kind of cloth with that of the blue coat that the Serjeant
commonly wore when he went a-shooting: Depones, That the bones were not
all lying together, but were scattered asunder, particularly some of
the joints of his arms, and one of his legs; and that some of them were
scattered at the distance of