The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

{142} Sydney, no date. {144} Phantasms, ii., 586, quoting (apparently) the Buckingham Gazette of the period. {145a} Oddly enough a Mr. William Soutar, of Blairgowrie, tells a ghost story of his own to the S.P.R.! {145b} I put them for convenience at the foot.--W. L. L. {146a} The dogs in all these towns (farms) of Mause are very well accustomed with hunting the fox. {146b} Blair (Blairgowrie) is the kirk-town of that parish, where there is also a weekly market: it lies about a mile below Middle Mause on the same side of the river. {146c} Knockhead is within less than half a mile of Middle Mause, and the Hilltown lies betwixt the two. We see both of them from our window of Craighall House. {148a} This George Soutar died about two or three years ago, and was very well known to William. {148b} The Isle is a spot of ground in the wood of Rychalzie, about a mile above Middle Mause, on the same side of the river. {149a} Glasclune is a gentleman of the name of Blair, whose house lies about three-quarters of a mile south-west from Middle Mause. {149b} He said the voice answered him as if it had been some distance without the door. {150} Besides the length of time since the murder was committed, there is another reason why all the bones were not found, viz., that there is a little burn or brook which had run for the space of twenty years, at least, across upon the place when the bones were found, and would have carried them all away had it not been that the bush, at the side of which they were buried, had turned the force of the stream a little from off that place where they lay, for they were not more than a foot, or at most a foot and a half, under ground, and it is only within these three years that a water-spate has altered the course of the burn.