permanently with Lord Durie. But those scoffers were chiefly a few
rising young advocates; the judge's family and his friends accepted the
tale in its entirety. Nor ever did any man, to the end of his days,
actually hear Lord Durie express doubt as to the supernatural nature of
his adventure.

Yet something did happen, later, which at least seemed in some measure
to have shaken his faith, and it was noticed that, towards the end of
his life, he was not fond of dwelling on the subject--had even been
known, in fact, to become irritable when pressed to tell his story. It
fell out, a year or two after the events which he had loved to narrate,
that Lord Durie had occasion to visit Dumfries. On the way back to
Edinburgh, travelling with some colleagues, it chanced that a heavy
storm caught them, and necessity drove them to take shelter for the
night in a farmhouse near to an old peel tower which stood on the verge
of the wild moorland country beyond Moffat.

That night Lord Durie, in his stuffy box-bed, dreamed a terrible dream.
He was once more in the power of the wizard or warlock; and it seemed to
him that in his dream he even heard again those mysterious words that
had once so haunted him. With a start he woke, bathed in perspiration,
to find that day had broken, and that from the hillside echoed the
long-drawn cry: "Far yaud! Far yaud! _Bauty!_" While, ben the house, he
could hear a slow, shuffling step, and a thin old voice quavering: "Hey,
Maudge!" to a mewing cat.

"What was yon cry oot on the hill? Oh, jist oor Ailick cryin' on his
dowg, Bauty, to weer the sheep," said the grey-haired, brown-faced old
woman to whom they had owed their shelter for the night.