At this time (1661) John Kincaid and John Dick were the most notorious prickers; and they let no one escape whom they had the chance of hurting. One John Hay, an old man of sixty, and of untarnished reputation, fell into Dick's hands, accused of sorcery by "a distracted woman," whose words were not worth the wind that wafted them. But Dick shaved him, and pricked him, and tortured him in all allowable ways, then sent him off to Edinburgh, two hundred miles away, to be locked up in the Tolbooth, pending further proceedings. The case against him was too slight for even those times to entertain, and he was liberated on his own petition, and a few testimonials: but John Dick was not reproved, nor was his zeal thought extreme or passionate. MISCELLANEOUS. Margaret Bryson[51] quarrelled with her husband about the selling of a cow; she went to the house-door, "and there did imprecate that God or the devil might take her from her husband;" which naturally ended in the devil's appearing and forcing her into the covenant with him that had its final expression at the stake. Margaret Hutchison was a witch, too. She laid on Henry Balfour the pains of a child-bed woman, and caused such a universal swelling of his body that he died thereof; and she threatened John Boost for calling her a witch, and threw a piece of raw flesh against his house, which the very dogs and cats would not eat; and she sent a plague of cats to John Bell's house, and tormented him and his wife by appearing at their hearth-side at night, combing her hair: so Margaret Hutchison was no better than she should be, and the world was well rid of her. Isabel Ramsey for her part was convicted of taking sixpence from the devil, and entering into a long chat with him upon sundry local matters; and, indeed, she herself confessed that he gave her a dollar, which turned into a sklaitt stane: for nothing that the devil did for these witches ever turned to good, so that one is more surprised at their stupidity than offended by their guilt.