upward push of the unskilled rider's leg, Lord Durie was hurled
from the saddle and lay sprawling on his back on the wet sand, as the
horse sprang forward with a startled bound.

"Goad's sake! what's this o't?" cried the poor judge, already tangled in
the folds of the long cloak, and struggling to rise. "Wad ye murder are
o' his Majesty's judges!"

"Lie still, my lord, lie still! There's no skaith will come to ye 'gin
ye but lie still. De'il's i' the body; wull the auld lurdane no hand
sae!"

Of small avail were the judge's struggles; as well might an infant
struggle in the folds of a python. Ere even an elderly man's scant
breath was quite spent, he lay among the whins, bound hand and foot,
trussed like a fowl, and with the upper part of his body and his head
wrapped in the stifling folds of the great cloak.

That was the last of the outer world that Lord Durie knew or saw for
many a long day. His horse, with muddied saddle, and broken reins
trailing on the ground (muddied and broken, no doubt, by the horse
rolling), was found next day grazing on the links. But of the judge, no
trace. He might--as some, with the superstition of the day, were
disposed to believe[1]--have been spirited away by a warlock; or,
perhaps, even like Thomas the Rhymer, he had vanished into Fairyland.
Tidings of him there were none. The flowing waters of the Forth had
effectually wiped out his horse's tracks along the shore, and during the
night a rising wind had effaced the footsteps of his captor in the dry
loose sand between tide-mark and links. Thus every trace of him was
lost. His body, maybe, might have drifted out to sea; perhaps it lay now
by the rocks of some lonely shore, or on the sands, with mouth a-wash
and dead hands playing idly with the lapping water. Wife and family
mourned as for one dead. And after the first nine days' wonder, even in
Parliament House and Law Courts, for lack of food speculation as to his
fate languished and died. A successor filled his office.

[1: In the seventeenth century belief in witchcraft was almost at its
height over the whole of Europe, and in Scotland the hunt after witches
and warlocks was peculiarly vindictive. To obtain confession, the most
incredible tortures--as cruel as anything practised by Red Indians on
their prisoners--were inflicted on accused persons, men and women, and
escape was seldom possible for these poor creatures. Nor were such
beliefs and practices confined to the benighte