To Lord Durie's regret, his return was too late to enable him to preside in the famous case which was about to come on shortly after the date of his disappearance. That had already been decided in a manner of which he could not have failed to disapprove, and Lord Traquair had secured a verdict.
For long the judge held to the warlock theory, and he was not averse, after dinner, over a bottle, from telling at great length the story of his terrible experiences during those mysterious three months of captivity. Younger men, indeed, began to find the tale somewhat boring, and in private some had been known to wish that the devil had flown away 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.
"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.
Tradition tells of his long ride to convey important papers from Lord Traquair to King Charles I, and of his perilous return journey, bearing a reply from his Majesty. Tidings of his mission had come to the ears of the Parliamentarians, and orders were issued to seize him at Carlisle. In that town, Will, unwitting of special danger, had halted an hour to refresh man and beast, and as he proceeded on his journey, and was midway over the high, narrow bridge across the Eden, the sudden clatter of horses' feet and the jingle of accoutrements at either end of the bridge showed him that his way was effectually blocked by the Roundhead troopers. Without a moment's hesitation, Will faced his horse at the parapet, and with a touch of the spur and a wild cheer over went the pair into the flooded river, disappearing in the tawny, foaming water with a mighty splash. Instead of hastening along the bank, Cromwell's troopers crowded on to the bridge, gazing with astonishment into the raging torrent. Thus, when Will and his horse, still unparted, came to the surface a considerable way down, there was time for them to reach the bank. But the bank was steep and the landing bad, and the weight of Will's saturated riding-cloak was the last straw that hindered the horse from scrambling up. With a curse Will cut the fastening that held the cloak about his neck, and, relieved from the extra weight, the animal with a desperate struggle gained the top of the bank and got away well ahead of the pursuing troopers. Had it not been for the speed and stamina of his horse, Will had surely been taken that night. As it was, ere they reached the Esk, one trooper was already far in front of his comrades, and thundering on Will's very heels. But a pistol pointed at his head by Will, a pistol with priming saturated, and incapable of being fired—had the man only thought of it—caused the trooper to draw back out of danger, and Will gained Esk's farther bank in safety, where, regardless of possible pistol shots, he waited to taunt his baffled pursuers.