The evening had now come, and the company prepared to depart; the minister, and the minister’s wife, Alexander Bailie of Dunraget, with his broad-lipped hat, and the rest. But the devil cried out in a kind of agony—
“Let not the minister go! I shall burn the house if he goes.” Weaver Campbell, desperately frightened, besought the minister to stay; and he, not willing to see them come to mischief, at last consented. As he turned back into the house, the devil gave a great gaff of laughing, saying, “Now, sir! you have done my bidding!” which was unhandsome of Tom—very.
“Not thine, but in obedience to God, have I returned to bear this man company whom thou dost afflict,” says the minister, nowise discomposed, and not disdaining to argue matters clearly with the devil.
Then the minister “discharged” all from speaking to the demon, saying, “that when it spoke to them they must only kneel and pray to God.” This did not suit the demon at all. He roared mightily, and cried, “What! will ye not speak to me? I shall strike the bairns, and do all manner of mischief!” No answer was returned; and again the children were slapped and beaten on their rosy parts—where children are accustomed to be whipped. After a while this ended too, and then the fiend called out to the good-wife, “Grissel, put out the candle!”
“Shall I do it?” says she to the minister’s wife.
“No,” says that discreet person, “for then you shall obey the devil.”
Upon which the devil shouted, with a louder voice, “Put out the candle!” No one obeyed, and the candle continued burning. “Put out the candle, I say!” cries he, more terribly than before. Grissel, not caring to continue the uproar, put it out. “And now,” says he, “I will trouble you no more this night.” For by this time I should suppose that Master Tom was sleepy, and tired, and hoarse.
Once again the ministers and gentlemen met for prayer and exorcism; when it is to be presumed that Tom was not with them, for everything was quiet; but soon after the stirs began again, and Tom and the rest were sore molested. Gilbert Campbell made an appeal to the Synod of Presbyters, a committee of whom appointed a special day of humiliation in February, 1656, for the freeing of the weaver’s house from this affliction. In consequence whereof, from April to August, the devil was perfectly quiet, and the family lived together in peace. But after this the mischief broke out again afresh. Perhaps Tom had come home from college, or his father had renewed his talk of settling him firmly to his own trade: whatever the cause, the effect was certain, the devil had come back to Glenluce.
One day, as the good-wife was standing by the fire, making the porridge for the children, the demon came and snatched the “tree-plate,” on which was the oatmeal, out of her hand, and spilt all the meal. “Let me have the tree-plate again,” says Grissel Wyllie, very humbly; and it came flying back to her. “It is like if she had sought the meal too she might have got it, such is his civility when he is intreated,” says Sinclair. But this would have been rather beyond even Master Tom’s power of legerdemain. Things after this went very ill. The children were daily thrashed with heavy staves, and every one in the family underwent much personal damage; until, as a climax, on the eighteenth of September, the demon said he would burn the house down, and did, in fact, set it on fire. But it was put out again, before much damage was done.
After a time—probably by Tom’s going away, or becoming afraid of being found out—the devil was quieted and laid for ever; and Master Tom employed his intellect and energies in other ways than terrifying his father’s family to death, and making stirs which went by the name of demoniac.