' _Notes and Queries_,
6th S. v. 342.
[625] As I have faithfully recorded so many minute particulars, I hope I
shall be pardoned for inserting so flattering an encomium on what is now
offered to the publick. BOSWELL.
[626] See _ante_, iv. 109, note 1.
[627] 'The islanders of all degrees, whether of rank or understanding,
universally admit it, except the ministers, who universally deny it, and
are suspected to deny it in consequence of a system, against
conviction.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 106.
[628] The true story of this lady, which happened in this century, is as
frightfully romantick as if it had been the fiction of a gloomy fancy.
She was the wife of one of the Lords of Session in Scotland, a man of
the very first blood of his country. For some mysterious reasons, which
have never been discovered, she was seized and carried off in the dark,
she knew not by whom, and by nightly journeys was conveyed to the
Highland shores, from whence she was transported by sea to the remote
rock of St. Kilda, where she remained, amongst its few wild inhabitants,
a forlorn prisoner, but had a constant supply of provisions, and a woman
to wait on her. No inquiry was made after her, till she at last found
means to convey a letter to a confidential friend, by the daughter of a
Catechist, who concealed it in a clue of yarn.
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