They tormented her sorely, and treated her with great harshness, knocking her about and beating her so that they took all the "poustie," or power out of her side with one of their heavy "straiks," and left her covered with bruises, blue and evil-favoured. She was never free from her questionable associates, who used to come upon her at all times and initiate her into their secrets, whether she liked it or no. They showed her how they gathered their herbs before sunrise, and she would watch them with their pans and fires making the "saws" or salves that could kill or cure all who used them, according to the witches' will; and they used to come and sit by her, and once took all the "poustie" from her for twenty weeks. Mr. William was then with them. He was a young man, not six years older than herself, and she would "feir" (be afraid) when she saw him. What with fairy teaching, and Mr. William's clinical lectures, half-crazed Alison soon got a reputation for healing powers; so great, indeed, that the Bishop of St. Andrews, a wretched hypochondriac, with as many diseases as would fill half the wards of an hospital, applied to her for some of her charms and remedies, which she had sense enough to make palateable, and such as should suit episcopal tastes: namely, spiced claret (a quart to be drunk at two draughts), and boiled capon as the internal remedies, with some fairy salve for outward application. It scarcely needed a long apprenticeship in witchcraft to prescribe claret and capon for a luxurious prelate who had brought himself into a state of chronic dyspepsia by laziness and high living; yet the jury thought the recipe of such profound wisdom that Alison got badly off on its account. Mr. William was very careful of Alison. He used to go before the fairy folk when they set out on the whirlwinds to plague her--"for they are ever in the blowing sea-wind," said Allie--and tell her of their coming; and he was very urgent that she should not go away with them altogether, since a tithe of them was yearly taken down to hell, and converts had always first chance. But many people known to her on earth were at Elfame. She said that she recognized Mr. Secretary Lethington, and the old Knight of Buccleugh, as of the party; which was equivalent to putting them out of heaven, and was a grievous libel, as the times went. Neither Mr. William's care nor fairy power could save poor Alison. After being "wirreit (strangled) at ane staik," she was "conuicta et combusta," never more to be troubled by epilepsy or the feverish dreams of madness. THE CRIMES OF LADY FOWLIS.[4]