Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/208

190 such, that no retribution could be obtained, nor punishment inflicted on the potent murderer. How the estate of Craig Hall returned to the family of Rattry, the legend does not say.

Another instance of the arbitrary state in which Scotland was held in old times, both in public and private affairs, is the melancholy fate of the wife of an Erskine, a lord of session, whose title was Lord Grange. It was suspected that the lady, by some means or other, had got at the knowledge of some state papers of infinite consequence; and as poor women are set down, in the minds of all arbitrary men, to be incapable of keeping a secret, Erskine and his son were determined to secure the one contained in the papers in question, by putting it out of the lady's power to divulge any thing she knew of the matter. To accomplish their design, the husband and son privately conveyed her to the island of St. Kilda, there put her on shore, and left her to shift for herself; and sailed back again, without a living being having missed them, or suspected what they had executed: nor could the lady's place of concealment be discovered by her friends, although they made every effort in their power to find out whither they had conveyed her, but to no