"Veesitors?" she continued, in reply to further questions. "Na. We hae
nae veesitors here. There was aince a puir sick man lay twa three months
i' the auld tower yont by, a year or twa back, but there's been nae
veesitors. They said he was daft, an' I was kind o' feared whiles to gie
him his meat. But, oh, he wad be jist a silly auld body that did naebody
hairm. Na, I never richtly got sicht o' his face, for I aye put his bit
meat an' drink doon beside him whan he was sleepin'. An' them that
broucht him took him awa again whan they thoucht he was some better."

It was noted that after this visit Lord Durie no longer pursued the
subject of warlocks.

[NOTE.--The story of Lord Durie's abduction and captivity is differently
told by Chambers in his _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, as far, at least,
as the instigator of the kidnapping and its accomplisher are concerned.
It is there recorded that the maker of the plot to kidnap the judge was
George Meldrum the Younger of Dumbreck. Accompanied by two Jardines and
a Johnston--good Border names--and by some other men, Meldrum seized
Lord Durie and a friend near St. Andrews, robbed them of their purses,
then carried the judge across the Firth of Forth to the house of one
William Kay in Leith, thence past Holyrood, and, by way doubtless of
Soutra Hill, to Melrose, from which town he was hurried over the Border
to Harbottle, and there held prisoner. An account of the trial of the
perpetrators of the abduction is to be found in Pitcairns' _Criminal
Trials._ Sir Walter Scott, however, in his _Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border_, gives to Will Armstrong of Gilnockie the credit, or discredit,
of carrying out the abduction single-handed. Will was certainly a much
more picturesque ruffian than ever was Meldrum, and many a wild deed
might be safely fathered on him.