I think it may be possible
that he had some hand in the death of his brother, and yet I am
disposed greatly to doubt it; and the numerous traditions, etc.
which remain of that event may be attributable to the work
having been printed and burnt, and of course the story known to
all the printers, with their families and gossips. That the young
Laird of Dalcastle came by a violent death, there remains no
doubt; but that this wretch slew him, there is to me a good deal.
However, allowing this to have been the case, I account all the
rest either dreaming or madness; or, as he says to Mr. Watson, a
religious parable, on purpose to illustrate something scarcely
tangible, but to which he seems to have attached great weight.
Were the relation at all consistent with reason, it corresponds so
minutely with traditionary facts that it could scarcely have missed
to have been received as authentic; but in this day, and with the
present generation, it will not go down that a man should be daily
tempted by the Devil, in the semblance of a fellow-creature; and
at length lured to self-destruction, in the hopes that this same
fiend and tormentor was to suffer and fall along with him.
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