It certainly seems as if this resemblance was an after-thought of Lofthouse's, for he dismissed the matter from his mind till prayers, when it 'discomposed his devotions'. He then mentioned the affair to his wife, who inferred that her sister had met with foul play. On April 23, that is the day after the vision, he went to Selby, where Harrison denied all knowledge of Mrs. Barwick. On April 24, Lofthouse made a deposition to this effect before the mayor of York, but, in his published statement of that date, he only avers that 'hearing nothing of the said Barwick's wife, he imagined Barwick had done her some mischief'. There is not a word hereof the phantasm sworn to by Lofthouse at the assizes on September 17. Nevertheless, on April 24, Barwick confessed to the mayor of York, that 'on Monday was seventh night' (there seems to be an error here) he 'found the conveniency of a pond' (as Aubrey puts it) 'adjoining to a quickwood hedge,' and there drowned the woman, and buried her hard by. At the assizes, Barwick withdrew his confession, and pleaded 'Not Guilty'. Lofthouse, his wife, and a third person swore, however, that the dead woman was found buried in her clothes by the pond side, and on the prisoner's confession being read, he was found guilty, and hanged in chains. Probably he was guilty, but Aubrey's dates are confused, and we are not even sure whether there were two ponds, and two quickset hedges, or only one of each. Lofthouse may have seen a stranger, dressed like his sister-in-law, this may have made him reflect on Barwick's tale about taking her to Selby; he visited that town, detected Barwick's falsehood, and the terror of that discovery made Barwick confess. Surtees, in his History of Durham, published another tale, which Scott's memory did not retain. In 1630, a girl named Anne Walker was about to have a child by a kinsman, also a Walker, for whom she kept house. Walker took her to Dame Care, in Chester le Street, whence he and Mark Sharp removed her one evening late in November. Fourteen days afterwards, late at night, Graime, a fuller, who lived six miles from Walker's village, Lumley, saw a woman, dishevelled, blood-stained, and with five wounds in her head, standing in a room in his mill. She said she was Anne Walker, that Mark Sharp had slain her with a collier's pick, and thrown her body into a coal- pit, hiding the pick under the bank. After several visitations, Graime went with his legend to a magistrate, the body and pick-axe were discovered, Walker and Sharp were arrested, and tried at Durham, in August, 1631. Sharp's boots, all bloody, were found where the ghost said he had concealed them 'in a stream'; how they remained bloody, if in water, is hard to explain. Against Walker there was no direct evidence. The prisoners, the judge summing up against them, were found guilty and hanged, protesting their innocence.