In August, a poor woman, named Bessie Graham, living in Kilwinning, was apprehended and thrown into prison, for some threatening words she had used in drink against a neighbour woman who had since died. During a confinement of thirteen weeks, she was visited by the minister, Mr James Fergusson, who, it was thought, might ascertain whether she was a witch or not. He found her obdurate in non-confession, and was greatly inclined to think her innocent. One Alexander Bogue, ‘skilled in searching the mark,’ came to examine her person, and finding a spot in the middle of her back, thrust in a pin, which neither inflicted pain nor drew blood. Still the minister hesitated to believe her guilty. He entered on a course of prayers for divine direction. Soon after, going one evening to the prison with his bedral, Alexander Simpson, he made a strenuous attempt to induce Bessie to confess, but without effect. To pursue his own narrative: ‘When I came to the stair-head, I resolved to halt a little to hear what she would say. Within a very short space, she begins to discourse, as if it had been to somebody with her. Her voice was so low, that I could not understand what she said, except one sentence, whereby I perceived she was speaking of somewhat I had been challenging her of and she had denied.... After a little while, I heard another voice speaking and whispering as it were conferring with her, which presently I apprehended to be the foul fiend’s voice.... She, having kept silence a time, began to speak again; and before she had well ended, the other voice speaketh as it were a long sentence, which, though I understood not what it was, yet it was so low and ghostly, that I was certainly persuaded that it was another voice than hers. Besides, her accent and manner of speaking was as if she had been speaking to some other; and that other voice, to the best of my remembrance, did begin before she had ended, so that two voices were to be heard at once. ‘By this time fear took hold on Alexander Simpson, being hindmost in the stair, and thereby he cries out. I did exhort him with a loud voice not to fear; and we came all of us down the stair, blessing God that had given me such a clearance in the business.’ This poor woman, on a subsequent conference with Mr Fergusson, confessed all she was accused of, except the imputed witchcraft. She said: ‘She knew she would die, and desired not to live; and she thought we would be free before God of her blood, because that, however she was free, yet there were so many things deponed against her, that it was hard for us to think otherwise of her than we did; yet she knew well enough her own innocence.’ Bessie was soon after tried, condemned, and executed, denying her guilt to the last.[130] [Sidenote: 1649.]