Marion Peebles[41] came to an untimely end, not unreasonably, according to the witch-haters. She was "a wicked, devilish, fearful, and abominable curser," and the world could not be too soon rid of her; for had she not changed herself into the likeness of an unchristian beast, a mere shapeless monster, a huge and ugly "pellack-quhaill" (porpoise), and in this form wrecked the boat of Edward Halcro, to whom she and her husband had "ane deadlie and veneficial malice?" Halcro and four other men were in the boat, and public suspicion pointed at once to Marion, and affirmed this wreck to be caused by her wicked deed. So when two of the dead bodies were brought to land, she and her husband had to undergo the _bahr-recht_--the ordeal by touch of the dead--to prove themselves innocent or guilty. When they came where they lay the "said umquhile Edward bled at the collar-bane or craig-bane;" the other in the hand and fingers, "gushing out bluid thairat, to the great admiration of the beholders, and judgment of the Almytie." Many and heavy were Marion's misdeeds. She cursed Janet Robinson, and "accordingly showers of pains and fits fell upon the victim." She looked upon a cow, and it "crappit togidder till no lyfe was leukit for her." She took away the profit of Edward Halcro's brewing, and destroyed the milk of Andrew Erasmusson's kye for thirteen days. Indeed, her character was so well known that when Swene, her husband, was working in a peat moss where a sickly fellow was one of the gang, his fellows would ask him seriously "if he could not make his wife go to her pobe (foster-father) the devil, and bid him loose a knot, so that the man might get back his health?" Once she cast a sickness on a woman, then took it from her and flung it on a calf, which went mad and died; and she crippled a man, then cured him under compulsion, by putting her fingers first to his leg and then to the ground, which she did twice, muttering to herself; but the report of this getting about, she was angry and banned the man once more, yet once more was forced to cure him;--this time by means of a bannock prepared with her own hands, whereby she cast his malady on a cow. Poor cowey died of her strange sickness, and poor Marion died of a worse disease--the rope and the faggot: and then the neighbourhood slept in peace. SINCLAIR'S STORIES.[42]