"In the Lowlands of Scotland stood an old manor house, where the owner's wife was on her death-bed. The ancient furniture still remained in the room, so the invalid lay in a four-post bed, with curtains all round it, wherein many generations of the family had been born and died. The curtains were drawn at its foot and on the side nearest the wall, but they were open on the other to a blazing fire, before which sat an attendant nurse. A tall screen on her left hand shielded her from the draught from a door, whose top was visible above it; and as the nurse sat there she became conscious that the door was opening and that a hand seemed to rest for a moment on the top of the screen. Presently, as she watched, half-paralysed with fear, a figure appeared from behind the screen--the figure of a young woman clothed in a sacque of rich brocade, over a pink silk petticoat, and wearing a head-dress of the time of Queen Anne. This figure advanced with a gentle undulating movement to the bed and bent down over it. Then the nurse jumped up and stretched out her hand to the bell-pull; and, lo! when she looked again the figure had vanished, and her patient lay there dead, with an expression of rapturous content on her sunken face.(94) Later, when the last sad rites had been accomplished, this nurse wandered into the picture gallery in company with the housekeeper, and pausing before a certain portrait, exclaimed that there was the original of the unknown lady. 'Ah,' came the answer, 'that lady lived here when Queen Anne was on the throne. They say she had a sad life with her lord, and died young. Ever since she is believed, when the mistress of the manor dies, to appear beside the bed, and--and'---- 'You need not tell me more,' said the nurse, 'for I also have seen her.'"(94) No account of superstitious belief in Galloway would be complete without reference to three remarkable tracts, giving quaint and circumstantial accounts of alleged supernatural visitations from the spirit-world beyond. In their order of publication these are--(_a_) "The Surprising Story of the Devil of Glenluce"; (_b_) "A True Account of an Apparition which infested the house of Andrew Mackie, in Ringcroft, Parish of Rerwick, and Stewartry of Kirkcudbright in 1695, ... Mr Alexander Telfair"; and (_c_) "The Laird o' Coul's Ghost." The "Devil of Glenluce" first appeared in an old work on _Hydrostaticks_ by George Sinclair, Professor of Philosophy and afterwards of Mathematics in the University of Glasgow. This work was published in 1672. It was again printed in his more important work, _Satan's Invisible World_, in 1685. The theme is concerned with the persecution of one Gilbert Campbell, a weaver, and his family, in the village of Glenluce, by an evil and tormenting spirit. As a chapbook this curious work had a very wide circulation.