Historical memoir of the family of Eglinton and Winton

104 BRANCHES OP THE
to the hostile invader " Come down, Robin, out
o' that corner, come down, man, to me, who did you
so good a turn as to make you young laird and auld
laird o' Skelmorlie in one day." The ruse took, as
indeed it could hardly fail to do, and, of course, a
temporary reconciliation at least was the result.
Of these sanguinary feudal adventures, how-
ever, Sir Robert, in the end, became repentant, and
" in expiation, performed many acts of charity and
mortification in his latter days." Now, too, he ap-
pears to have found favour and grace with the zea-
lous covenanting kirk ; and their well-meaning, but
credulous historian, Woodrow, has not failed to re-
cord various favourable anecdotes of his declining
years — " He was a man mighty in prayer, and
much at it, but very short at a time. He would
have left company when in his own house, fre-
quently in a little time, and retired a little to his
closet, as if it had been to look at a paper, and
it was known it was for prayer." The difficulty
of judging correctly of the impressions and ac-
tions of past ages is all but insurmountable ;
and the following wild absurdity painfully shows
how the strongest minds may be unable to resist
the influence of long-existing universal credulity,
fostered too by all the arts of subtile priest-
craft ; of course the relation is from the same
reverend authority : — " There was a man that either
confest witchcraft or was condemned for it in the
west country, said to Sir Robert Montgomerie of
Skelmorlie, that he, with the devil, came into the