The Buchanites and Crocketford. 29,1 



into a garden. They fenced the ground, let the grass for 

 stock, built a stable and byre, made spinning-wheels and 

 bartered the tinsmith's wares for wool, which they speedily 

 spun into yarn for the celebrated light green clothes which 

 all the Buchanites were soon to wear. And so well did they 

 thrive that at the time of Luckie's death, in March, 1791, 

 after four full and diligent years they had paid their rent up 

 to date, " they had 13 stacks of corn, 7 horses in a newly- 

 built stable, 7 cows, a large stock of black cattle, and a stock 

 of sheep and swine. The people had two suits of clothes 

 each, newly made, with several webs of linen and woollen 

 cloth in store." But, then, there were over two score of 

 workers in this busy hive ! 



Towards the close of- March, 1791, it began to be plainly 

 seen that Luckie Buchan was failing fast. Quarrels and grave 

 differences of opinion between her and the overbearing mini- 

 ster White had become increasingly frequent during the last 

 four years ; and these had seriously interfered with her sere- 

 nity of mind. At last, on the morning of the 29th March, she 

 succumbed rather unexpectedly. Andrew Innes, her most 

 enthusiastic devotee and " errand boy," a carpenter to trade, 

 and so far as we know Mrs Buchan's only Glasgow convert, 

 was flailing in the barn at the time; and he was hurriedly 

 summoned to her bedside. He was in time to hear her dying 

 declaration that she would return in six days ; if not, in ten 

 years; if not then, most certainly in fifty years. The old 

 delusion was as strong at death as it had been in life. Her 

 fifty-three years of chequered pilgrimage were over; yet by 

 an irony of fate her poor inanimate body was doomed to suffer 

 for another five-and-fifty years the penalty of her own bizarre 

 pretensions. For it was only in 1846 that the corpse, which 

 had lain in Kirkgunzeon kirkyard, and then under the kitchen 

 hearthstone at Auchengibbert, and latterly in an open chest 

 first at Larghill and then at Xewhouse, was finally laid to 

 rest. What a contrast between her example and fate and 

 that of another woman who died in the same year in the 

 adjacent parish of Irongray a few months later. God's acre 

 reverently yet proudly bears aloft the name of " Jeanie 

 Deans " for the loving admiration of the world, while her 



