delighted. Incensed at the obstinacy with which they defied all her
efforts to collect them, and not remembering the precise terms of the
contract by which the fiend was bound to obey her commands for a certain
space, the sorceress exclaimed, "Deevil, that neither I nor they ever
stir from this spot more!" The words were hardly uttered, when, by a
metamorphosis as sudden as any in Ovid, the hag and her refractory flock
were converted into stone, the angel whom she served, being a strict
formalist, grasping eagerly at an opportunity of completing the ruin of
her body and soul by a literal obedience to her orders. It is said, that
when she perceived and felt the transformation which was about to take
place, she exclaimed to the treacherous fiend, "Ah, thou false thief!
lang hast thou promised me a grey gown, and now I am getting ane that
will last for ever." The dimensions of the pillar, and of the stones,
were often appealed to, as a proof of the superior stature and size of
old women and geese in the days of other years, by those praisers of
the past who held the comfortable opinion of the gradual degeneracy of
mankind.

All particulars of this legend Hobbie called to mind as he passed along
the moor. He also remembered, that, since the catastrophe had taken
place, the scene of it had been avoided, at least after night-fall, by
all human beings, as being the ordinary resort of kelpies, spunkies, and
other demons, once the companions of the witch's diabolical revels,
and now continuing to rendezvous upon the same spot, as if still in
attendance on their transformed mistress. Hobbie's natural hardihood,
however, manfully combated with these intrusive sensations of awe.
He summoned to his side the brace of large greyhounds, who were the
companions of his sports, and who were wont, in his own phrase, to fear
neither dog nor devil; he looked at the priming of his piece, and, like
the clown in Hallowe'en, whistled up the warlike ditty of Jock of the