CHAPTER XXXI.
In which a witch did dwell, in loathly weeds, And wilful want, all careless of her deeds; So choosing solitary to abide, Far from all neighbours, that her devilish deeds And hellish arts from people she might hide, And hurt far off, unknown, whome'er she envied.
Faerie Queene.
THE health of Lucy Ashton soon required the assistance of a person more skilful in the office of a sick-nurse than the female domestics of the family.

Ailsie Gourlay, sometimes called the Wise Woman of Bowden, was the person whom, for her own strong reasons, Lady Ashton selected as an attendant upon her daughter.
This woman had acquired a considerable reputation among the ignorant by the pretended cures which she performed, especially in "oncomes," as the Scotch call them, or mysterious diseases, which baffle the regular physician.

Her pharmacopoeia consisted partly of herbs selected in planetary hours, partly of words, signs, and charms, which sometimes, perhaps, produced a favourable influence upon the imagination of her patients.

Such was the avowed profession of Luckie Gourlay, which, as may well be supposed, was looked upon with a suspicious eye, not only by her neighbours, but even by the clergy of the district.

In private, however, she traded more deeply in the occult sciences; for, notwithstanding the dreadful punishments inflicted upon the supposed crime of witchcraft, there wanted not those who, steeled by want and bitterness of spirit, were willing to adopt the hateful and dangerous character, for the sake of the influence which its terrors enabled them to exercise in the vicinity, and the wretched emolument which they could extract by the practice of their supposed art.
Ailsie Gourlay was not indeed fool enough to acknowledge a compact with the Evil One, which would have been a swift and ready road to the stake and tar-barrel.