Among the escapes of the eighteenth century I pick out two, both from the Heart of Midlothian. One was that of Catherine Nairn in 1766. She had poisoned her husband, and was the mistress of his brother. She was brought to Leith from the north in an open boat, and shut up in the Tolbooth. The brother, who had been an officer in the army, was executed in the Grassmarket, but judgment was respited in the case of the lady on the plea of pregnancy. She escaped by changing clothes with the midwife, who was supposed to be suffering from severe toothache. She howled so loudly as she went out, that she almost overdid the part. The keeper cursed her for a howling old Jezebel, and wished he might never see her again. Possibly he was in the business himself. The lady had various exciting adventures before she reached a safe hiding-place, almost blundered, in fact, into the house of her enemies. She finally left the town in a postchaise, whose driver had orders, if he were pursued, to drive into the sea and drown his fare as if by accident, and thus make a summary end of one whose high-placed relatives were only assisting her for the sake of the family name. The levity of her conduct all through excited the indignation and alarm of those who had charge of her; perhaps she was hysterical. She got well off to France, where she married a gentleman of good position, and ended “virtuous and fortunate.” This seems the usual fate of the lady criminal; either her experience enables her to capture easily the male victim, or her adventures give her an unholy attraction in the eyes of the multitude. She is rarely an inveterate law-breaker, as she learns from bitter experience that honesty and virtue are the more agreeable policies. Other than wealthy and well-connected criminals escaped. In 1783 James Hay lay in the condemned hold for burglary. Hay and his father filled the keeper drunk. Old Hay, by imitating the drawl of the keeper uttering the stereotyped formula of ‘turn your hand,’ procured the opening of the outer door, and the lad was off like a hare into the night. With a fine instinct of the romantic he hid himself in “Bluidy Mackenzie’s” tomb, held as haunted by all Edinburgh. He was an “auld callant” of Heriot’s Hospital, which rises just by old Greyfriars’, and the boys supplied him with food in the night-time. When the hue and cry had quieted down, he crawled out, escaped, and in due time, it was whispered, began a new life under other skies. Probably the ghostly reputation of that stately mausoleum in Greyfriars’ Churchyard was more firmly established than ever. What could be the cause of those audible midnight mutterings, if not the restless ghost of the persecuting Lord Advocate?