Chapter 7 - Page 2

present from an officer in his regiment. His dress, on the fatal 28th of September, was "a blue surtout coat, with a striped silk vest, and teiken breeches and brown stockings". His hair, of "a dark mouse colour," was worn in a silk ribbon, his hat was silver laced, and bore his initials cut in the felt. Thus attired, "a pretty man," Sergeant Davies said good-bye to his wife, who never saw him again, and left his lodgings at Michael Farquharson's early on 28th September. He took four men with him, and went to meet the patrol from Glenshee. On the way he met John Growar in Glenclunie, who spoke with him "about a tartan coat, which the sergeant had observed him to drop, and after strictly enjoining him not to use it again, dismissed him, instead of making him prisoner".

This encounter was after Davies left his men, before meeting the patrol, it being his intention to cross the hill and try for a shot at a stag.

The sergeant never rejoined his men or met the patrol! He vanished as if the fairies had taken him. His captain searched the hill with a band of men four days after the disappearance, but to no avail. Various rumours ran about the country, among others a clatter that Davies had been killed by Duncan Clerk and Alexander Bain Macdonald. But the body was undiscovered.

In June, one Alexander Macpherson came to Donald Farquharson, son of the man with whom Davies had been used to lodge. Macpherson (who was living in a sheiling or summer hut of shepherds on the hills) said that he "was greatly troubled by the ghost of Sergeant Davies, who insisted that he should bury his bones, and that, he having declined to bury them, the ghost insisted that he should apply to Donald Farquharson". Farquharson "could not believe this," till Macpherson invited him to come and see the bones. Then Farquharson went with the other, "as he thought it might possibly be true, and if it was, he did not know but the apparition might trouble himself".

The bones were found in a peat moss, about half a mile from the road taken by the patrols. There, too, lay the poor sergeant's mouse- coloured hair, with rags of his blue cloth and his brogues, without the silver buckles, and there did Farquharson and Macpherson bury them all.

Alexander Macpherson, in his evidence at the trial, declared that, late in May, 1750, "when he was in bed, a vision appeared to him as of a man clothed in blue, who said, 'I am Sergeant Davies!'". At first Macpherson thought the figure was "a real living man," a brother of Donald Farquharson's. He therefore rose and followed his visitor to the door, where the ghost indicated the position of his bones, and said that Donald Farquharson would help to inter them. Macpherson next day found the bones, and spoke to Growar, the man of the tartan coat (as Growar admitted at the trial). Growar said if Macpherson did not