little table a supply of food and drink, all good of their kind and
plenty--boiled beef or mutton, oaten cakes, pease bannocks, and always
the jack of small-beer--but never did he see human hand place them
there, never did human form cheer him by its presence.

The solitary confinement and the utter want of occupation told on a
nervous, somewhat highly strung temperament; and in the judge's mind
superstition began to hold unquestioned sway. Things taught him in
childhood by an old nurse, things which now folks, indeed, still
believed, but which he himself had to some extent given up or dismissed
from his thoughts, began to crowd back again into his brain. No mere
human power, surely, could have brought him here as he had been brought.
Was it in the dungeon of some sorcerer, of some disciple of the Devil,
that he now lay? Then, the shuffling old step that he heard so
frequently, the thin voice calling, "Hey! Maudge," followed always by
the mewing of a cat--what could that be but some old hag, given over to
evil deeds, talking to her familiar? It was but the other day that, with
his own eyes, he had seen nine witches burned together on Leith Sands,
and all, ere they died, had confessed to the most horrid commerce with
the Devil. It was no great time since a witch, under torture, had
revealed in her confession the terrible truth, of how two hundred women
had been wont to flock at night to a certain kirk in North Berwick,
there to listen eagerly to Satan preaching blasphemy and denouncing the
King. Even a judge was not safe from their malice. And could he but
escape from the snare in which he now lay entangled, assuredly, Lord
Durie thought, there should be more witch-burnings.

So the weeks dragged past, and Lord Durie lost all reckoning of the
flight of time; but ever the belief strengthened that it was no mere
human power that held him in bondage. And this belief received