I08 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. . [Craigcrook
Local tradition makes Craigcrook the scene of a
murder, but this is a mistake, though there was
such a crime connected with it.
Mr. John Strachan before-mentioned-whose
charitable bequest is still known as ?the Craigcrook
Mortification?-in 1707 had a house in
the High Street of Edinburgh, which was kept
for him by a servant named Helen Bell, and as
she was l&ft in town a good deal by herself, ?as
other young women in her situation will do, she
two bottles and the large house-key to carry, that
her burden might be lightened,
No doubt she had been intending to take the
old road that led by the Dean to Craigcrook, but
on coming to a narrow and difficult part of the
way, called the Three Step, at the foot of the
Castle Rock, they threw her down and cruelly slew
her by blows of a hammer.
In a confession made subsequently by Thomson,
they hurried back to town, with the intention of
RAVELSTON HOUSE.
admitted young men to see her in her master?s
house.?
On Hallowe?en night, in the year of the Union,
two young craftsmen came to visit her-William
Thomson and John Robertson-whom she chanced
to inform that on Monday morning, the second
morning thereafter, she had to go westward to Craigcrook,
leaving the house in the High Street empty.
At five in the morning of the 3rd of November,
the poor girl locked up the house and set forth on
her short journey, little foreseeing it was the last
she would take on earth. As she was traversing
the dark and silent streets, Thomson and Robertson
joined her, saying they were going a part of the
way, and would escort her. On this she gave them
ransacking Mr. Strachan?s house for money or
valuables, and on passing through the Grassmarket
they swore, mutually, to give their bodies and souls
to the devil if either should inform on the other in
the event of being captured.
?In the empty streets,? says the ?Domestic
Annalist of Scotland,? quoting Wood?s ? History of
Cramond,? ?in the dull grey of the morning,
agitated by the horrid reflections arising from their
barbarous act and its probable consequences, it is
not very wonderful that almost any sort of hallucination
should have taken possession of these
miserable men. It was stated by them that on
Robertson proposing that their engagement should
be engrossed in a bond, a man stated up between
