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THE CAVALIER.
195

his reputation, for he could fight almost as well as his master, though unluckily without sharing in his advantages; for the poor brute was shot at Marston Moor, in the very act of pulling down a rebel. Even the clergy, it would seem, were not wholly averse to Satan's valuable patronage; for Wodrow—to whose claims as an historian Mr. Morris is strangely lenient—tells us gravely how the unfortunate Archbishop of St. Andrew's cowered trembling in the Privy Council, when Janet Douglas, then on trial for witchcraft, made bold to remind him of the "meikle black devil" who was closeted with him the last Saturday at midnight.

But even our delighted appreciation of these very interesting and characteristic legends cannot altogether blind us to the dubious quality of history based upon such testimony, and it is a little startling to see that, as years rolled by, the impression they created remained practically undimmed. Colonel Fergusson, in the preface to his delightful volume on The Laird of Lag, confesses that in his youth it was still a favorite Halloween game to dress up some enterprising member of the household