His captain searched the hill with a
band of men four days after the disappearance, but to no avail.
Various rumours ran about the country, among others a clatter that
Davies had been killed by Duncan Clerk and Alexander Bain Macdonald.
But the body was undiscovered.
In June, one Alexander Macpherson came to Donald Farquharson, son of
the man with whom Davies had been used to lodge. Macpherson (who was
living in a sheiling or summer hut of shepherds on the hills) said
that he "was greatly troubled by the ghost of Sergeant Davies, who
insisted that he should bury his bones, and that, he having declined
to bury them, the ghost insisted that he should apply to Donald
Farquharson". Farquharson "could not believe this," till Macpherson
invited him to come and see the bones. Then Farquharson went with the
other, "as he thought it might possibly be true, and if it was, he did
not know but the apparition might trouble himself".
The bones were found in a peat moss, about half a mile from the road
taken by the patrols. There, too, lay the poor sergeant's mouse-
coloured hair, with rags of his blue cloth and his brogues, without
the silver buckles, and there did Farquharson and Macpherson bury them
all.
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