nd Tom and the rest were sore
molested. Gilbert Campbell made an appeal to the Synod of Presbyters, a
committee of whom appointed a special day of humiliation in February,
1656, for the freeing of the weaver's house from this affliction. In
consequence whereof, from April to August, the devil was perfectly quiet,
and the family lived together in peace. But after this the mischief broke
out again afresh. Perhaps Tom had come home from college, or his father
had renewed his talk of settling him firmly to his own trade: whatever the
cause, the effect was certain, the devil had come back to Glenluce.

One day, as the good-wife was standing by the fire, making the porridge
for the children, the demon came and snatched the "tree-plate," on which
was the oatmeal, out of her hand, and spilt all the meal. "Let me have the
tree-plate again," says Grissel Wyllie, very humbly; and it came flying
back to her. "It is like if she had sought the meal too she might have got
it, such is his civility when he is intreated," says Sinclair. But this
would have been rather beyond even Master Tom's power of legerdemain.
Things after this went very ill. The children were daily thrashed with
heavy staves, and every one in the family underwent much personal damage;
until, as a climax, on the eighteenth of September, the demon said he
would burn the house down, and did, in fact, set it on fire. But it was
put out again, before much damage was done.

After a time--probably by Tom's going away, or becoming afraid of being
found out--the devil was quieted and laid for ever; and Master Tom
employed his intellect and energies in other ways than terrifying his
father's family to death, and making stirs which went by the name of
demoniac.

This account is taken almost verbatim from an article of mine in "All the
Year Round;" and if a larger space has been given to this than to many
other stories, it is because there was more colouring, and more
distinctness in the drawing, than in anything else that I have read.
Though scarcely belonging to a book on witches, there is yet a hook and
eye, if a very slender one, in the fact that the old beggar, Andrew Agnew,
was hanged; and we may be sure that it was not only his atheism, but also
his naughty tricks with Satan, and his connection with the devil of
Glenluce, that helped to fit the hangman's rope round his neck. There are
many other stories of haunted houses, notably, Mr. Monpesson's at Tedworth
caused by