On September 28, 1749, Sergeant Arthur Davies departed the quarter at Dubrach for the hills of Braemar. The record preserves two accounts of the patrol rendezvous: four soldiers testified that he had failed to meet them; a corporal reported having seen him arrive alone after their departure. Davies never returned to his lodging. Five years later, two local men were tried in Edinburgh for his alleged murder; the jurors unanimously declared them not guilty.
The case survives in the 1831 volume printed for Walter Scott, containing the proceedings of the trial held in June 1754. His introduction recounts the affair as a murder and dwells upon the apparition said to have revealed the names of the assassins. The depositions themselves belong to a formal hearing where witnesses and conflicting versions were brought face to face. These two registers must not be conflated: the jury did not adopt the conclusion placed by Scott at the head of his narrative.
Davies served in General Guise’s regiment, stationed at Dubrach alongside several soldiers. The trial record depicts him patrolling between that station and another contingent at Glenshee. This military presence followed the Jacobite rebellion of 1745: certain inhabitants, according to witnesses, had not surrendered all their arms and still wore Highland dress. Scott characterizes Davies’s duty as odious to the local populace; this constitutes a retrospective interpretation. The trial established no specific threat against the sergeant.
His wife, Jean Ghent, had lived with him for ten months. She recounted that he had set out early, then relayed the statements of the men who returned before four o’clock and of the corporal from Glenshee, the sole individual to have seen him again after their departure. She herself never saw him again. Ghent described his blue coat, his striped waistcoat, his brogues, and his silver-laced hat. She affirmed that he carried a watch, a penknife, two rings, and fifteen and a half guineas; on the previous evening, she had assisted him in keeping his watch dry.
These particulars became a judicial inventory. Davies frequently displayed his gold coins; he had himself carved his initials into his hat. The articles and their value served to interpret what was subsequently recovered. Ghent believed he had been murdered, though she could not say by whom or in what manner. She added that he never spent a night away from his post, save once to consult the regimental surgeon.
The initial searches yielded nothing. Desertion was suspected, and later some cast doubt upon soldiers or thieves. In the summer of 1750, Alexander Macpherson, a shepherd and servant, stated that he had discovered in the peat bones nearly bared of flesh, blue cloth, dark hair tied with a ribbon, and brogues with their fastenings cut. He did not recognize Davies by his face: he linked these remains to the sergeant by the clothing and the rumors of his disappearance.
The discovery did not immediately initiate a formal inquiry. Macpherson affirmed that he had hesitated to disclose what he had found. John Growar allegedly advised him to hold his tongue; John Shaw of Daldownie allegedly urged him to bury the bones in secret, fearing the affair might bring trouble upon a country already suspected of harboring rebel sympathies. Donald Farquharson, subsequently summoned, is said to have assisted in concealing the remains within the moss. The accounts given by these men do not describe a public exhumation followed by a methodical examination. The trial provides neither medical report nor independent identification of the skeletal remains.
Macpherson swore that an apparition, clad at first in blue and then appearing naked upon a subsequent visit, had guided him to the bones and ultimately named Terig, alias Clerk, and Macdonald. Farquharson stated that he had remained doubtful until the remains were uncovered at the indicated spot. Isobel M’Hardie testified to having seen a naked form enter their shieling, though without identifying it as Davies or reporting an accusation. Scott treats this testimony with irony, suggesting that Macpherson might have acquired his knowledge of the affair by ordinary means. That represents the editor’s hypothesis, not a finding of the jury.
At trial, the ghost formed only one part of the circumstantial web presented by the prosecution. A young woman named Isobel Ego stated that she had found a silver-laced hat on the hill and delivered it to her master, Alexander Macdonald. The latter confirmed that she had brought in a hat; his wife, believing it might belong to Davies, bade him conceal it under a stone near the burn. The hat subsequently passed through several hands, was found by children, and was then surrendered to a factor and to barrack-master John Cook. The latter recognized the letters D. A. upon the crown; the indictment gives A. R. D., while Ghent remembered A. D. This chain of custody provided the narrative with a concrete object, yet each link rested upon what a witness had seen or been told; no one had seen the hat fall from the sergeant’s head.
The rings produced another, less stable chain. Several neighbors recalled seeing a yellow ring, fairly heavy and adorned with a relief, upon the finger of Elizabeth Downie, who became Clerk’s wife. Certain persons suspected it resembled one of Davies’s rings; none could establish on their own that it was indeed the sergeant’s. Peter Macnab reported that Downie told him she had purchased it from a peddler named James Lauder. For the defense, Captain John Forbes recounted a preliminary examination: Downie had allegedly shown him a gold ring received from her mother and stated she had given a copper ring to Alexander McIntosh, alias Reoch, before her marriage. These testimonies do not establish a common provenance: they present two versions of the object and the suspicions that fastened upon it.
The prosecution possessed a witness who claimed to have witnessed an assault. Angus Cameron recounted that in the late afternoon of September 28, he was standing with a companion in a hollow. At a distance, he saw a man in blue, whom he took to be a sergeant or an officer, whereupon Terig and another, shorter man approached. According to Cameron, Terig struck the man, who cried out and turned; both assailants fired almost in unison and closed upon the body. Cameron said he had kept silent for nine months or a year. He could not identify the second man and did not learn of the sergeant’s disappearance until six months after the scene he described.
The intervening interval and the question of identification proved material. Cameron named Clerk, whom he already knew, but described the other man solely by his stature; the trial reveals no equivalent recognition establishing that this second man was Macdonald. Duncan Cameron and Donald Dow Cameron reported that Angus had told them of having seen Clerk and a stranger shoot at an officer. Both also testified that they had discouraged him from speaking out, lest an accusation bring down wrath upon the district. These were rehearsals of later spoken words, distinct from the direct observation Angus claimed to have made himself. The remaining indications placed the accused in the vicinity, but their weight depended largely on belated recollections, articles circulating through various hands, or local repute.
The presence of both men in the neighborhood was not in dispute. John Grant stated that they had lodged at his house on September 27 and that each carried a gun the following morning. They declared their purpose to be a deer hunt and a search for strayed horses; his son saw them take the Gleney path, which was not the direct way to Christie Hill. Macdonald explained that he had fired at game, then corrected an earlier statement concerning where he had passed the night. Counsel for the defense pressed these movements, the delays in the proceedings, and the shifting theories over the years. The prosecution, for its part, presented this armed presence, the witnesses’ accounts, the hat, and the rings as converging proofs.
On June 10, 1754, the Lords Commissioners of Justiciary ruled the libel relevant to infer the pains of law and remitted the panel to the knowledge of an assize, allowing the accused to lead evidence to prove their exculpation. Depositions were heard at the sitting of the 11th. The following day, having heard both parties, the fifteen jurors unanimously found Terig and Macdonald not guilty. The judges assoilzied the panel and dismissed them from the bar. The verdict named no other murderer, nor did it substantiate a desertion; it marked the boundary of what had been proved against them.
Scott confers upon the affair a romance-like cast: a missing soldier, an apparition, rings, and an eyewitness asserting he saw the blows and the shots. Yet the trial preserves its ambiguities: Cameron could not name the second man; Macpherson provided successive accounts; the exhibits passed through multiple hands; the remains were never identified by any forensic examination described herein. The jury acquitted the accused without converting those uncertainties into answers. Beneath the peat, bones and fragments remained; within the record, certitudes dissolve as one traces back the chain of human voices.