some of the phenomena of madness, and of how intimately with one's life is interwoven common sense, even in the fibres of a diseased brain. She said further that she was persuaded "her mother was a witch, for the secretest thing that either I myself or any of the family could do, when once a mark appeared upon her brow, she could tell it them, though done at a great distance! Being demanded what sort of a mark it was, she answered, 'I have some such like mark myself when I please, on my forehead.' Whereupon she offered to uncover her head for visible satisfaction; the minister refusing to behold it, and forbidding any discovery, was earnestly requested by some spectators to allow the freedom: he yielded. She put back her head-dress, and, seeming to frown, there was an exact horse-shoe, shaped for nails, in her wrinkles--terrible enough, I assure you, to the stoutest beholder." Her further confessions were curious, involving, as they did, a visit from a tall woman who had one child at her back and one or two at her feet; and who came to her, wanting her to speak to the Queen of Fairy, and to strike and do battle with the said queen on her behalf. The next day came "ane little woman," with a piece of a tree, or the root of some herb, and she told her that so long as she kept the same she should do well, and should attain all she might desire. So she spun at her yarn, and found more yarn on the "pirn" than she thought to find; which frightened her. This took place when she "keeped a school at Dalkeith, and teached childering." She also rambled on about a fiery chariot in which she and her brother had paid visits, and of his mysterious visitors and his thornwood staff; and when nothing more was to be got out of her she was hung, and the world was all the cleaner for the loss of so much folly and wickedness from out the general mass. THE DUMB GIRL OF POLLOK.[58]