The "warning," at all events what is accepted as such, has many forms and varieties. Some of the more commonly accepted forms are the switch-like strokes, usually three in number, across the window of the sick-chamber, or even other windows in the house; the falling of pictures without apparent cause; the baying of dogs in the watches of the night; the footfall and apparent sound of footsteps in the house, heard overhead or coming along passages, or ascending or descending stairs, and so realistic that the door is expectantly opened, only to find nothing there; the stopping of clocks at the time of the passing of the spirit; and the noise as of approaching wheels and crunching gravel at the doors of country houses when death hovers near. Many examples and accounts of such things taking place are extant and seriously believed in; indeed, there is not a parish in the whole district we are treating of but on enquiry gives ample proof of the generality of belief in such portents. Belief in the switch-like strokes across the window is in this district, perhaps, the commonest of all. Of the footfall type an example may be quoted from Moniaive. It is told how an old lady, in her younger days in the service of a medical man in Moniaive, for a time heard persistent strange footfalls in an upper room of the house. The doctor afterwards was seized with sudden illness, lay down on a sofa and died over the very spot where the strange noises had been heard. Only the other day an account of the mysterious stopping of a clock associated with death appeared in the local newspapers, which may in part be given:-- "Mrs Stoba, who lived alone in a cottage at Greenmill, Caerlaverock, died suddenly during the night of Thursday last, from heart failure. Her blind not being drawn up on Friday morning, some neighbours forced the door about half-past ten, and found that she had passed away. It is a singular coincidence that an eight-day clock which had been her property, and is now in the house of her son, the burgh officer of Dumfries, stopped at five minutes before midnight on Thursday, although it was wound up, and there was no apparent reason for the stoppage."(69) A special form of warning is the "Licht before Death." In the parish of Tynron it is recounted how this mysterious light illumined up, on one occasion, the whole interior of a byre where a woman was engaged milking cows, and how afterwards she learned that her mother had died the same evening. Mr John Corrie (Moniaive) gives a good example of this form from the parish of Glencairn:-- "An old Glencairn lady, on looking out of the door one dark night, saw a strange light shining in the vicinity of a house where an acquaintance lived. Entering the house she commented on what she had seen, and expressed the hope that 'it wasna the deid licht.' Her fears were ridiculed, but next morning it transpired that a member of the family over whose dwelling the light was seen had committed suicide."