Such being the general case with respect to apparitions, really alluded to or quoted in formal evidence in courts of justice, an evidence of that kind gravely given and received in the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, has some title to be considered as a curiosity.
The Editor's connexion with it is of an old standing, since, shortly after he was called to the bar in 1792, it was pointed out to him by Robert M'Intosh, Esq., one of the counsel in the case, then and long after remarkable for the interest which he took, and the management which he possessed, in the prolix and complicated affairs of the York Building Company.
The cause of the trial, bloody and sad enough in its own nature, was one of the acts of violence which were the natural consequences of the Civil War in 1745.
It was about three years after the battle of Culloden that this poor man, Sergeant Davis, was quartered, with a small military party, in an uncommonly wild part of the Highlands, near the country of the Farquharsons, as it is called, and adjacent to that which is now the property of the Earl of Fife. A more waste tract of mountain and bog, rocks and ravines, extending from Dubrach to Glenshee, without habitations of any kind until you reach Glenclunie, is scarce to be met with in Scotland. A more fit locality, therefore, for a deed of murder, could hardly be pointed out, nor one which could tend more to agitate superstitious feelings. The hill of Christie, on which the murder was actually committed, is a local name, which is probably known in the country, though the Editor has been unable to discover it more specially, but it certainly forms part of the ridge to which the general description applies. Davis was attached to the country where he had his residence, by the great plenty of sport which it afforded, and, when dispatched upon duty across these mountains, he usually went at some distance from his men, and followed his game without regarding the hints thrown out about danger from the country people. To this he was exposed, not only from his being intrusted with the odious office of depriving the people of their arms and national dress, but still more from his usually carrying about with him a stock of money and valuables, considerable for the time and period, and enough of itself to be a temptation to his murder.