A little farther east, we come to a curious old house,--Peffer Mill,--which neither time nor modern improvements seem to have touched, since Sir Walter Scott picked it out as the house of Jeanie Deans's unsuccessful suitor, and called it Dumbiedykes. It was built in 1636, by one of the Edgar family, whose arms,[31] impaled with those of his wife, a Pearson of Balmadies, are still to be seen over the principal door. Above are their initials entwined, and below, the two mottoes, _Cui vult dat Deus_ and _Dum spiro spero_. It is now the property of Mr. Gordon Gilmour. Two curious old sundials are built into the walls of the house. The word _Peffer_, which is not an uncommon name for a burn in Scotland, means, I believe, "the dark and muddy stream." Tradition says that a subterranean passage formerly existed between this house and Craigmillar; and the opening leading into it from the castle is still shown, though the passage itself has long been choked up. [31] Dexter, a lion rampant for Edgar; Sinister, two swords conjoined in base, piercing a man's heart, a cinquefoil in chief, for Pearson. A ghastly incident took place here in 1728. A Musselburgh woman called Maggie Dickson was hanged in Edinburgh. Her friends, who were conveying her remains back to Musselburgh in a cart, stopped to rest and refresh themselves at the ale-house that then stood at Peffer Mill. While they were in the inn, a country wright had the curiosity to look at the coffin, to compare the Edinburgh workmanship in that line with his own. While doing so, he heard a strange noise inside, and having speedily given the alarm to her friends in the hostelry, they were astonished, as well as terrified, on rushing out, to find her sitting upright in the coffin, the lid of which had not been screwed down. The woman quite recovered, lived for many years, and had several children, but she was known for the rest of her life as "Half-hangit Maggie Dickson."[32] [32] "Gude e'en to ye, Daddie Ratton; they tauld me ye were hanged, man; or did ye get out o' John Dalgleish's hands, like half-hangit Maggie Dickson?"--_Heart of Midlothian_, chap. viii.