 manner reduced to despair, Lucy's temper
gave way under the pressure of constant affliction and persecution. She became
gloomy and abstracted, and contrary to her natural and ordinary habit of mind,
sometimes turned with spirit, and even fierceness, on those by whom she was long
and closely annoyed. Her health also began to be shaken, and her hectic cheek
and wandering eye gave symptoms of what is called a fever upon the spirits. In
most mothers this would have moved compassion; but Lady Ashton, compact and firm
of purpose, saw these waverings of health and intellect with no greater sympathy
than that with which the hostile engineer regards the towers of a beleaguered
city as they reel under the discharge of his artillery; or rather, she
considered these starts and inequalities of temper as symptoms of Lucy's
expiring resolution; as the angler, by the throes and convulsive exertions of
the fish which he has hooked, becomes aware that he soon will be able to land
him. To accelerate the catastrophe in the present case, Lady Ashton had recourse
to an expedient very consistent with the temper and credulity of those times,
but which the reader will probably pronounce truly detestable and diabolical.
 

                               Chapter Thirtieth

                                   * * * * *
 In which a witch did dwell, in loathly weeds,
 And wilful want, all careless of her needs;
 So choosing solitary to abide,
 Far from all neighbours, that her devilish deeds
 And hellish arts from people she might hide,
 And hurt far off, unknown, whome'er she envied.
                                                                    Fairy Queen.
 
The health of Lucy Ashton soon required the assistance of a person more skilful
in the office of a sick-nurse than the female domestics of the family. Ailsie
Gourlay, sometimes called the Wise Woman of Bowden, was the person whom, for her
own strong reasons, Lady Ashton selected as an attendant upon her daughter.
    This woman had acquired a considerable reputation among the ignorant by the
pretended cures which she performed, especially in oncomes, as the Scotch call
them, or mysterious diseases, which baffle the regular physician. Her
pharmacopoeia consisted partly of herbs selected in planetary hours, partly of
words, signs, and charms, which sometimes, perhaps, produced a favourable
influence upon the imagination of her patients. Such was the avowed profession
of Lucky Gourlay, which, as may well be supposed, was looked upon with a
suspicious eye, not only by her neighbours, but even by the clergy of the
district. In private, however, she traded more deeply in the occult sciences;
for, notwithstanding the dreadful punishments inflicted upon the supposed crime
of witchcraft, there
