Page:Guy Mannering Vol 3.djvu/135

Rh tales of witchery, in a manner at once convenient for the private parties concerned, and satisfactory to the public.

Now it must be confessed, that our friend Sampson, although a profound scholar and mathematician, had not travelled so far in philosophy as to doubt the reality of witchcraft or apparitions. Born indeed at a time when a doubt in the existence of witches was interpreted to be a justification of their infernal practices, a belief of such legends had been impressed upon him as an article indivisible from his religious faith, and perhaps it would have been equally difficult to have induced him to doubt the one as the other. With these feelings, and in a thick misty day, which was already drawing to its close. Dominie Sampson did not pass the Kaim of Derncleugh without some feelings of tacit horror.

What then was his astonishment, when, on passing the door—that door which was supposed to have been placed there by one