, and took hold of
him, and so returned him into the same room; we all watched him, and on a sudden
he was again out of the doors. I followed him close, and he made a noise in the
street as if he had been set upon; but from that time I could never see him.
                                                                 GEORGE BURTON.«
 
25 The gloomy, dangerous, and constant wanderings of the persecuted sect of
Cameronians, naturally led to their entertaining with peculiar credulity the
belief that they were sometimes persecuted, not only by the wrath of men, but by
the secret wiles and open terrors of Satan. In fact, a flood could not happen, a
horse cast a shoe, or any other the most ordinary interruption thwart a
minister's wish to perform service at a particular spot, than the accident was
imputed to the immediate agency of fiends. The encounter of Alexander Peden with
the Devil in the cave, and that of John Semple with the demon in the ford, are
given by Peter Walker almost in the language of the text.
 
26 Nichol Muschat, a debauched and profligate wretch, having conceived a hatred
against his wife, entered into a conspiracy with another brutal libertine and
gambler, named Campbell of Burnbank (repeatedly mentioned in Pennycuick's
satirical poems of the time), by which Campbell undertook to destroy the woman's
character, so as to enable Muschat, on false pretences, to obtain a divorce from
her. The brutal devices to which these worthy accomplices resorted for that
purpose having failed, they endeavoured to destroy her by administering medicine
of a dangerous kind, and in extraordinary quantities.
This purpose also failing, Nichol Muschat, or Muschet, did finally, on the 17th
October 1720, carry his wife under cloud of night to the King's Park, adjacent
to what is called the Duke's Walk, near Holyrood Palace, and there took her life
by cutting her throat almost quite through, and inflicting other wounds. He
pleaded guilty to the indictment, for which he suffered death. His associate,
Campbell, was sentenced to transportation for his share in the previous
conspiracy. See MacLaurin's Criminal Cases, pp. 64 and 738.
In memory, and at the same time execration, of the deed, a cairn, or pile of
stones, long marked the spot. It is now almost totally removed, in consequence
of an alteration on the road in that place.
 
27 The Scottish Statute Book, anno 1690, chapter 21, in consequence of the great
increase of the crime of child-murder, both from the temptations to