deponent's father, and is
accounted an honest lad; but on the panel's interrogatory, Depones,
that he has been charged with telling of stories, and that all is not
to be believed that he says; though that is the general character, the
deponent knows no reason for it: Depones, That Duncan Clerk once
pursued his accusers before a Sheriff Court at Braemar, and freed
himself at that time, and, as he heard, got some mends of his accusers,
but what it was he knows not: That the only particular act of theft he
heard him accused of, was the stealing of a parcel of sheep from
Alexander Farquharson in Inverey, and which was the ground of the
process before mentioned before the Sheriff: Depones, That the Sabbath
before the Serjeant was amissing, a woman came to the deponent's
father's house, and told them that, coming through the hills, she had
seen four thieves in arms, who had separated fourteen of his father's
cattle, upon which the Serjeant, with a party, went in quest of them
immediately, but could find none of them, they having, it seems, gone
off and left the cattle: Depones, That upon the Friday, the
twenty-ninth of September, the corporal stationed at Glenshee met with
the deponent at the fair of Kirkmichael, while the deponent was buying
a pair of shoes, and he told the corporal that they were for Serjeant
Davies, and the corporal told him that he had parted with the Serjeant
the day before at the Water of Benow; the Serjeant, after that, was
going to the hill to get a shot of the deer; which Water of Benow is
about half a mile's distance from the place where the patrolling
parties used to meet: Depones, That the prisoner Clerk was a common
dealer in buying of sheep and cattle; and the deponent has seen him
both buying and paying the price, and his father was reputed one of the
richest tenants in Inverey's grounds. _Causa scientiae patet_; and this
is truth, as he shall answer to God.

(Signed) DONALD FARQUHARSON.
P. GRANT.

ALEXANDER M'PHERSON _alias_ M^CGILLAS, in Inverey, being solemnly
sworn, purged of malice and partial council, and interrogate, aged
twenty-six years, unmarried, Depones, That in summer one thousand seven
hundred and fifty, he found lying in a moss bank in the hill of
Christie, a human body, at least the bones of a human body, of which
the flesh was mostly consumed, and he believed it to be the body of
Serjeant Davies, because it was reported in t