Few people pass through the remote parish of Marnoch, which lies on the borders of Banffshire and Aberdeenshire, but those who do are most certainly rewarded. The Deveron, not so well known as the Dee, still keeps a charm of loneliness for those who love her, and the burns are browner than in the southland. By such a burn was Kinairdy built, on a little promontory where the stream joins the Deveron. When I asked to see Kinairdy, I was told ‘There’s nothing to see there, only the old tower down by the river,’ but the old tower was enough for me, and packed full of memories. To this old house it was that David Gregorie took his wife and children in 1664. We get occasional glimpses of him as he passes about the country, at one time laughed at by his neighbours for his total ignorance of farming, while at another, in a case of illness, they would eagerly wait for his coming, with a feeling as if life and death were in his hands. Sometimes no doubt it was so, and to rich and poor alike he would go, giving his advice gratuitously for the love of doctoring, and because he was benevolent. This medical skill of his stood him in good stead on one occasion, when a deputation of ministers called upon him to answer for himself on the charge of being a wizard. There were dread stories abroad concerning him, how, by having sold his soul to the Devil, he was able to foretell the weather (what a thing to sell your soul for in Scotland!) how, after days of sunshine, he could predict rain and sure enough the rain would come, and he might make it go on raining for weeks through his intercourse with the powers of darkness. Poor Gregorie, face to face with his accusers, went through the little crowd of his children, and brought in the familiar spirit, which was only a barometer, tried to explain how it worked, asked them to examine it (which I do not believe any of them would do), and won them over to his side by his sheer lovableness. After all, who was to doctor them with the skill of David Gregorie if he were burned for a wizard? So the kind doctor was left to his home and his work. The ministers did not understand his defence, but there was not one of them who could not remember how, with some well-chosen simple, he had healed one of their dear ones in the hour of need.