habit of applying to one Thome Reid, who died at
the battle of Pinkie (10th September, 1547), as he himself affirmed, and
who resolved her any questions which she asked at him. This person she
described as a respectable elderly-looking man, grey-bearded, and
wearing a grey coat, with Lombard sleeves of the auld fashion. A pair of
grey breeches and white stockings gartered above the knee, a black
bonnet on his head, close behind and plain before, with silken laces
drawn through the lips thereof, and a white wand in his hand, completed
the description of what we may suppose a respectable-looking man of the
province and period. Being demanded concerning her first interview with
this mysterious Thome Reid, she gave rather an affecting account of the
disasters with which she was then afflicted, and a sense of which
perhaps aided to conjure up the imaginary counsellor. She was walking
between her own house and the yard of Monkcastle, driving her cows to
the common pasture, and making heavy moan with herself, weeping bitterly
for her cow that was dead, her husband and child that were sick of the
land-ill (some contagious sickness of the time), while she herself was
in a very infirm state, having lately borne a child. On this occasion
she met Thome Reid for the first time, who saluted her courteously,
which she returned. "Sancta Maria, Bessie!" said the apparition, "why
must thou make such dole and weeping for any earthly thing?" "Have I not
reason for great sorrow," said she, "since our property is going to
destruction, my husband is on the point of death, my baby will not live,
and I am myself at a weak point? Have I not cause to have a sore heart?"
"Bessie," answered the spirit, "thou hast displeased God in asking
something that thou should not, and I counsel you to amend your fault. I
tell thee, thy child shall die ere thou get home; thy two sheep shall
also die; but thy husband shall recover, and be as well and feir as ever
he was." The good woman was something comforted to hear that her husband
was to be spared in such her general calamity, but was rather alarmed to
see her ghostly counsellor pass from her and disappear through a hole in
the garden wall, seemingly too narrow to admit of any living person
passing through it. Another time he met her at the Thorn of Dawmstarnik,
and showed his ultimate purpose by offering her plenty of every thing if
she would but deny Christendom and the faith she took at the font-stone.
She