The King, after his return, suspecting that witchcraft had something to do in raising the storm which drove his intended wife on the coast of Norway, set to work to make discoveries; and two of his female servants were suspected of causing the storm before alluded to. Their names were Geillis Duncan and Agnes Sampson. Both of them were put to the torture to extort confession. These poor young women, broken down and exhausted by so dreadful an operation, became willing to answer such questions as this royal blockhead had prepared to put to them. Agnes Sampson told the King, that she, in company with two hundred other witches, had sailed in sieves from Leith to North Berwick Church; how they had there encountered the Devil in person; how they had feasted with him, and what obscenities had been; practised. She related, that in this voyage they had drowned a cat, having first baptized it; and that immediately a dreadful storm arose, and in this very storm the King’s ship had been separated from the rest of the fleet. Inconsequence of this confession, Agnes Sampson was condemned to the flames. The system of torture resorted to under cir-circumstances of suspicion, compelled poor suffering creatures to answer any questions put to them to satisfy their cruel tormentors and in many cases, after all, they were put to death. King James the First published his Dialogues on Demonology in three books. But many years after he renounced his belief in the real existence of Witchcraft altogether; and in the latter part of his reign, declared that all he had done was the effect of delusion.