After his first examination and confession, Fian was put into a separate room, where he quickly came to a state of penitence, renounced the devil and his works, and professed to have returned to God. Next day he told his keepers that he had had a vision of the devil, who, finding him a determined rebel against his authority, said: ‘Once ere thou die thou shalt be mine;’ after which he broke a white wand which he held in his hand, and vanished. Fian soon after contrived to escape from prison, but was retaken and brought back, when, being found to deny his former confession, the king expressed his belief that he must have entered into a new compact with the Prince of Darkness. His person was searched for marks, but in vain; and he was then subjected to tortures of the direst kind, with a view to bringing him back to his confession. The nails of the poor wretch were torn away with pincers; needles were thrust up to the heads in his fingers, and his legs were crushed in the boots till ‘the blood and marrow spouted forth.’ He resisted all, and thus only impressed the king and others with the conviction that the devil had entered into his heart. He was then arraigned, condemned, and burned. The trials of three of the women inculpated took place in the course of a few ensuing months--that of Agnes Sampson on the 27th of January 1591. At the previous examinations, the king presided, manifesting a deep interest in the declarations of the prisoners, as if he read therein the materials of a new branch of science; and, indeed, there can be little doubt that what he now learned formed the groundwork of his subsequent work on _Demonology_. The cases were the more remarkable on account of the apparent character and station of the culprits. Sampson was a grave, matron-like woman, who gave composed, pertinent answers to all that was put to her; while Napier and M‘Calyean belonged to the upper class of society. Sampson’s dittay consists of no fewer than fifty-three articles, each charging some distinct form or act of sorcery, most of them cures or attempts to cure, or else prophecies of events which actually came to pass, all being done with the assistance of her familiar, the devil. The various articles, numerous as they are, must have been founded on the confessions previously drawn from the accused by means of the inhuman torture of a rope twisted round the head, which she is said to have endured for an hour unmoved. It was alleged that for her cures she uttered incantations in rhyme; but these appear to have had nothing devilish in them, one being merely a rough version of the Apostles’ Creed, while another runs as follows: ‘All kinds of ills that ever may be, In Christ’s name I conjure ye; I conjure ye baith mair and less, With all the vertues of the Mess; And richt sae, by the nailis sae, That nailit Jesus and nae mae; [Sidenote: 1590.]