Some time after the murder, Donald Farquharson, living in Glenshee, had been informed by his neighbor Alexander MacPherson, that he (MacPherson) had been visited frequently by an apparition. It was the ghost of Sergeant Davies, who insisted upon having a burial of his remains. This MacPherson had declined to have anything to do with. On this the spectre had bidden him apply to Donald Farquharson. Together they visited the spot where MacPherson said the remains were lying; Donald giving as a reason for going his fear of being troubled by the grave-seeking ghost of the slaughtered Saxon.
The witness described the finding of what was left of the skeleton of the unhappy warrior. They were satisfactorily recognized by certain incontestable signs.
MacPherson’s description of the ghost as it appeared to him was this: A figure clad in blue. He appeared at night; he was in bed; he rose and followed it to the door. “I am Sergeant Davies,” said the spectre; and then he related the facts of the murder, and pointed out the place where his body or his relics could be found. The witness had asked the names of the murderers. The ghost declined, upon the ground that he could not reply to a question, but would have told if he had not been asked. The ghost had visited him again, but this time totally denuded of clothing,—but always desiring to have his body buried. The body was subsequently properly interred. Again the ghost had come to him and had announced his murderers,—“Duncan Clerk and Alexander MacDonald,”—the prisoners then at the bar. The witness was asked by Mr. Macintosh, counsel for the prisoners, what language the ghost spoke. “As good Gaelic as ever he heard in Lochaber,” said MacPherson. “Pretty well,” commented McIntosh, “for the ghost of an English sergeant.” The facts turned out to be that MacPherson had been in the employment of Clerk, and a disagreement had arisen between the two men. MacPherson had often charged Clerk with the murder, and on this Clerk had promised to do everything for him if he would only keep his suspicions secret. But stronger evidence was produced against the prisoners. A man named Cameron had seen the murder perpetrated. He saw Clerk and another man fire simultaneously at the soldier, and he saw him fall; but he was deterred from making these facts known to the authorities for fear of incurring the animosity of the Highlanders, who thought it no great harm, but perhaps a merit, to shoot down one of the hated invaders.
Curious to relate, the prisoners were acquitted. The evidence against MacDonald was not clear; but no doubt existed as to the guilt of Clerk. MacPherson was prompted to the accusation against Clerk by motives of personal malice, and, having become possessed of Clerk’s secret, he was anxious to gratify his hatred. Fear of the popular hatred, if he lodged a simple accusation against his victim, on account of the abhorrence in which an informer was particularly held at that time, and the more so if the information was directed against a native in favor of the dominant race, he was obliged to invent his ghost-story, and, thus appealing to popular belief in the supernatural, effect his purpose. But the jury would not believe his story, for it was known that he had discovered the sergeant’s remains before he told of the ghostly visitations, which proved that the marvel was an afterthought.
Sir Walter Scott edited an account of the murder for the Bannatyne Club, and Mr. Hill Burton has included the story in his narratives of Criminal Trials in Scotland. Sir Walter, relating another trial where a ghost attempted by a second party to affix his murder upon a certain person, gives the following remark of the presiding judge upon the responsibility of the ghost testimony: “Stop!” the Judge interrupted, gravely; “this will not do. The evidence of the ghost is very much to the purpose, no doubt, but we can’t receive it second-hand. None can speak with a clearer knowledge of what befell him during life. But he must of course be sworn in the usual way. Call the ghost in open court, therefore, and, if he appears, the jury and I will give all weight to his evidence; but in case he does not come forward, I cannot allow of his being heard, as now proposed through the medium of a third party.” Up to this date it is not known whether the bailiff has made a return of the summons or not. We presume not.
But was it a ghost that confronted me?
That question, now that time is progressively dimming the vividness of the impression that I received when first I saw that something on the brow of the hill, rises to the tribunal of my own investigation. I am as anxious to have the mystery solved as my reader possibly could be; indeed I am more anxious than any other person could be. Dim as it sometimes appears to my mind’s eye at times, there are occasions when it assumes all the exactness of an incident that transpired but a second since. I see it cross the wall, advance out of the shadow into the light, stand still, then whirl or wheel, make one human-looking step, and vanish. Will I ever see it again? That is another question that disturbs me some. I cannot do but wait; but with what feelings, wait? You, in your fair room with gas a-lit, or reading in the broad-falling down of sunlight on this page, cannot conceive. Put out your light and let the room grow dark, and pause and think, and then perhaps, despite the adamantive philosophy of your unbelief, you may recognize the sentiments I have; or on some still and luminous night, moonless, drive out to that old wood and by yourself, even now, with such great washings of rains and cleansing of snows and storms of wind, go to the rock where the girl was found and see how your nerves will quiver, or how your heart will throb; or, passing down the road, draw rein at the cottage where I stopped, and, saying naught to any one, place yourself where I stood and wait.
I myself would not willingly try that visit over again, not that I dread anything of harm from such an act, but because I have been there once before and have had enough. But if I never see that strange visitor again, I will see the murderer. Of that I am convinced. I have firm reliance in law when it is honestly employed to detect crime or protect the wronged. I have faith in that subtle sympathy, which connects us with the dead. I feel that without it, love would be but a thread broken by the last breathing of our lungs, and memory nothing but an intellectual frigidity, to be melted into mist as we approach the haven of the hereafter. The dead appeal to us by the mesmeric agency of their immortality; they throw out, through every movement of the world’s circumstances and events, a suggestion of their needs, their condition, and their destiny. They are like the history of the past sublimated by the eloquence of immutable truth, and are sanctified by a sleep that has eternal life within its closed lids. They have, too, a sympathy in retort with us. As naught of the material can suffer annihilation, so the soul, being indestructible, permeates the air we breathe as do those revived plants of perfume that last fall we might have fancied dead and beyond all chance of life again. If that vision was a ghost, its purpose will be revealed; for it is impossible to suppose that the Ruler of the Universe, who says a sparrow shall not fall without his knowledge, would permit so strange an occurrence to happen without having an intention. What that intention was, I for one, if only one, shall wait patiently to see.
THE END.