"The time however fast approached, when these human sacrifices were to be abolished. The last person who was prosecuted before the Lords of Justiciary for witchcraft was Elspeth Rule, who was tried before Lord Anstruther at the Dumfries circuit, on the 3d of May, 1709.[IX] No special act of witchcraft was charged against her; the indictment was of a very general nature, that the prisoner was 'habit and repute'[X] (that is, generally holden and deemed) a witch; and that she had used threatening expressions against persons at enmity with her, who were afterwards visited with the loss of cattle, or the death of friends, and one of whom run mad. The jury, by a majority of voices, found these articles proved, and the Judge ordained the prisoner to be burned on the cheek, and to be banished Scotland for life. The last person who was brought to the stake in Scotland for the crime of witchcraft was condemned by Captain David Ross of Little Daan[XI] sheriff-depute of Sutherland, A.D. 1722. "Besides in the sufferings, and tragical end of the persons already specified, human ingenuity seems to have been exhausted in devising variety of torment, against other persons who lay under the suspicion of witchcraft, and who persisted, with astonishing fortitude, in denying the absurd imputation, even when urged with the sharpest tortures." From the universal and excessive abhorrence entertained at a witch, a suspicion of that crime, independent of judicial severities,[XII] was sufficient to render the unhappy object anxious for death.--Thrusting of pins into the flesh, and keeping the accused from sleep, were the ordinary treatment of a witch. But if the prisoner was endued with uncommon fortitude, other methods were used to extort confession. The 'boots,' the 'caspie-claws,' and the 'pilniewinks,' engines for torturing the legs, the arms, and the fingers, were applied to either sex; and that with such violence, that sometimes the blood would have spouted from the limbs. Loading with heavy irons, and whipping with cords, till the skin and flesh were torn from the bones, have also been the adopted methods of torment. The bloody zeal of those inquisitors attained to a refinement in cruelty so shocking to humanity,[XIII] and so repugnant to justice, as to be almost incredible. Not satisfied with torturing _the person_ of the accused, their ingenious malice assailed the more delicate feelings, and ardent affections of the _mind_. An aged husband, an infant daughter, would have been tortured in presence of the accused, in order to subdue her resolution.--Nay, death itself[XIV] did not screen the remains of those miserable persons from the malice of their prosecutors. If an unfortunate woman, trembling at a citation for witchcraft, ended her sufferings by her own hands, she was dragged from her house at a horse's tail, and buried under the gallows. [I] This is the Act on which Sir Walter Scott founded his story of the "Heart of Mid-Lothian."