ent from an officer in his regiment. His dress,
on the fatal 28th of September, was "a blue surtout coat, with a
striped silk vest, and teiken breeches and brown stockings". His
hair, of "a dark mouse colour," was worn in a silk ribbon, his hat was
silver laced, and bore his initials cut in the felt. Thus attired, "a
pretty man," Sergeant Davies said good-bye to his wife, who never saw
him again, and left his lodgings at Michael Farquharson's early on
28th September. He took four men with him, and went to meet the
patrol from Glenshee. On the way he met John Growar in Glenclunie,
who spoke with him "about a tartan coat, which the sergeant had
observed him to drop, and after strictly enjoining him not to use it
again, dismissed him, instead of making him prisoner".

This encounter was after Davies left his men, before meeting the
patrol, it being his intention to cross the hill and try for a shot at
a stag.

The sergeant never rejoined his men or met the patrol! He vanished as
if the fairies had taken him. His captain searched the hill with a
band of men four days after the disappearance, but to no avail.
Various rumours ran about the country, among others a clatter that
Davies had been killed by Duncan Clerk and Alexander Bain Macdonald.
But the body was undiscovered.

In June, one Alexander Macpherson came to Donald Farquharson, son of
the man with whom Davies had been used to lodge. Macpherson (who was
living in a sheiling or summer hut of shepherds on the hills) said
that he "was greatly troubled by the ghost of Sergeant 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 Donald
Farquharson". Farquharson "could not believe this," till Macpherson
invited him to come and see the bones. Then Farquharson went with the
other, "as he thought it might possibly be true, and if it was, he did
not know but the apparition might trouble himself".

The bones were found in a peat moss, about half a mile from the road
taken by the patrols. There, too, lay the poor sergeant's mouse-
coloured hair, with rags of his blue cloth and his brogues, without
the silver buckles, and there did Farquharson and Macpherson bury them
all.

Alexander Macpherson, in his evidence at the trial, declared that,
late in May, 1750, "when he was in bed, a vision appeared to him as of
a man clothed in blue, who said, '_I am Sergeant Davies_!'". At first