Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Sixteen.Sunny Memories of the Border-Land.“Pipe of Northumbria, sound;War pipe of Alnwicke,Wake the wild hills around;Percy at Paynim war.Fenwicke stand foremost;Scots in array from farSwell wide their war-host.“Come clad in your steel jack,Your war gear in order,And down hew or drive backThe Scots o’er the border.”Old Ballad.“I tell you what it is, my boy,” said a well-known London editor to me one day, shortly before I started on my long tour in the Wanderer,—“I tell you what it is, you’llneverdo it.”He was standing a little way off my caravan as he spoke, so as to be able to take her all in, optically, and his head was cocked a-trifle to one side, consideringly. “Never do what?”“Never reach Scotland.”“Why?”“Why? First, because a two-ton caravan is too much for even two such horses as you have, considering the hills you will have to encounter; and, secondly,” he added with a sly smile, “because Scotchman never ‘gang back.’”I seized that little world-wise editor just above the elbow. He looked beseechingly up at me.“Let go?” he cried; “your fingers are made of iron fencing; my arm isn’t.”“Can you for one moment imagine,” I said, “what the condition of this England of yours would be were all the Scotchmen to be suddenly taken out of it; suddenly to disappear from great cities like Manchester and Liverpool, from posts of highest duty in London itself, from the Navy, from the Army, from the Volunteers? Is the bare idea not calculated to induce a more dreadful nightmare than even a lobster salad?”“I think,” said the editor, quietly, as I released him, “we might manage to meet the difficulty.”But despite the dark forebodings of my neighbours and the insinuations of this editor, here I am in bonnie Scotland.“My foot in on my native heath,And my name is—”Well, the reader knows what my name is.I have pleasant recollections of my last day or two’s drive in Northumberland north, just before entering my native land.Say from the Blue Bell Hotel at Belford. What a stir there was in that pretty little town, to be sure! We were well out of it, because I got the Wanderer brought to anchor in an immensely large stackyard. There was the sound of the circus’s brass band coming from a field some distance off, the occasional whoop-la! of the merry-go-rounds and patent-swing folks, and the bang-banging of rifles at the itinerant shooting galleries; but that was all there was to disturb us.I couldn’t help thinking that I never saw brawnier, wirier men than those young farmers who met Earl P— at his political meeting.I remember being somewhat annoyed at having to start in a procession of gipsy vans, but glad when we got up the hill, and when Pea-blossom and Corn-flower gave them all the slip.Then the splendid country we passed through; the blue sea away on our right; away to the left the everlasting hills! The long low shores of the Holy Isle flanked by its square-towered castle. It is high water while we pass, and Lindisfarne is wholly an island.“Stay, coachman, stay; let us think; let us dream; let us imagine ourselves back in the days of long, long ago. Yonder island, my Jehu John, which is now so peacefully slumbering ’neath the midday sun, half shrouded in the blue mist of distance, its lordly castle only a shape, its priory now hidden from our view—“‘The castle with its battled walls,The ancient monastery’s halls,Yon solemn, huge, and dark-red pile,Placed on the margin of the isle.’”—Have a history, my gentle Jehu, far more worthy of being listened to than any romance that has ever been conceived or penned.“Aidan the Christian lived and laboured yonder; from his home in that lone, surf-beaten island scintillated, as from a star, the primitive rays of our religion of love.”Jehu John (speaks): “Excuse me, sir, but that is all a kind o’ Greek to me.”“Knowest thou not, my gentle John, that more than a thousand years ago that monastery was built there, that—“‘In Saxon strength that abbey frownedWith massive arches broad and round,That rose alternate row and rowOn pond’rous columns short and low,Built ere the art was known,By pointed aisle and shafted stalkThe arcades of an alleyed walkTo emulate in stone.On those deep walls the heathen DaneHad poured his impious rage in vain.’“Hast never heard of Saint Cuthbert?”“No, sir; can’t say as ever I has.”“John! John! John! But that wondrous, that ‘mutable and unreasonable saint’ dwelt yonder, nor after death did he rest, John, but was seen by many in divers places and at divers times in this kingdom of Britain the Great! Have you never heard the legend that he sailed down the Tweed in a huge stone coffin?”“Ha! ha! I can’t quite swallow that, sir.”“That his figure may even until this day be seen, that—“‘On a rock by LindisfarneSaint Cuthbert sits and toils to frameThe sea-born beads that bear his name.Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told,And said they might his shape behold,And hear his anvil sound:A deadened clang—a huge dim formSeen but, and heard, when gathering stormAnd night were closing round.’”“It makes me a kind of eerie, sir, to hear you talk like that.”“I can’t help it, John; the poetry of the Great Wizard of the North seems still to hang around these shores. I hear it in the leaves that whisper to the winds, in the wild scream of the sea-birds, and in the surf that comes murmuring across that stretch of sand, or goes hissing round the weed-clad rocks.“But, John, you’ve heard of Grace Darling?”“Ah! there I do feel at home.”“Then you know the story. At the Longstone Lighthouse out yonder she lived. You see the castle of Bamburgh, with its square tower, there. We noticed it all day yesterday while coming to Belford; first we took it for a lighthouse, then for a church, but finally a bright stream of sunshine fell on it from behind a cloud—on it, and onitalone, and suddenly we knew it. Well, in the churchyard there the lassie sleeps.”“Indeed, sir!”“Shall we drop a tear to her memory, my gentle Jehu?”“Don’t think I could screw one out, sir.”“Then drive on, John.”I remember stopping at a queer old-fashioned Northumbrian inn for the midday halt. We just drew up at the other side of the road. It was a very lonely place. The inn, with its byres and stables, was perched on the top of a rocky hill, and men and horses had to climb like cats to get up to the doors.By the way, my horses do climb in a wonderful way. Whenever any one now says to me, “There is a terrible hill a few miles on,” “Can a cat get up?” I inquire.“Oh, yes, sir; a cat could go up,” is the answer.“Then,” say I, “my horses will do it.”At this inn was a very, very old man, and a very, very old woman, and their son Brad. Brad was waiter, ostler, everything, tall, slow, and canny-looking.Brad, like most of the people hereabout, spoke as though he had swallowed a raw potato, and it had stuck in his throat.Even the North Northumbrian girls talk as if they suffered from chronic tonsillitis, or their tongues were too broad at the base.When the dinner had been discussed, the dishes washed, and I had had a rest, the horses staggered down the hill and were put in.I said to Brad, “How much, my friend?”“Whhateveh yew plhease, sirr; you’gh a ghentleman,” replied Brad, trying apparently to swallow his tongue. I gave him two shillings.No sooner had it been put in his trousers pocket than the coin started off on a voyage of discovery down his leg, and soon popped out on to the road. Brad evidently had sprung a leak somewhere, and for a time the money kept dropping from him. Whenever he moved he “layed” a coin, so to speak, and the last I saw of Brad he was leaning lazily against a fence counting his money.I remember that near the borders we climbed a long, long hill, and were so happy when we got to the top of it—the horses panting and foaming, and we all tired and thirsty.The view of the long stretch of blue hills behind as was very beautiful.Here on the hilltop was an inn, with its gable and a row of stables facing the road, and here on a bit of grass we drew up, and determined to take the horses out for the midday halt. But we reckoned without our host. The place was called the Cat Inn.The landlady was in the kitchen, making a huge pie.No, we could have no stabling. Their own horses would be home in half an hour.She followed me out.“Half an hour’s rest,” I said, “out of the sun will do my poor nags some good.”“I tell ye, ye canna have it,” she snapped.“Then we can have a bucket or two of water, I suppose?”“Never a drop. We’ve barely enough for ourselves.”I offered to pay for it I talked almost angrily.“Never a drop. You’re no so ceevil.”Talking of Northumbrian inns, I remember once having a good laugh.A buxom young lassie, as fresh as a mountain-daisy, had served me, during a halt, with some ginger-ale.After drinking and putting the glass down on the table, I was drying my long moustache with my handkerchief, and looking at the lassie thoughtfully—I trust not admiringly.“Ah, sir,” she said, nodding her head and smiling, “ye need na be wiping your mouth; you’re no goin’ to get a kiss fromme.”But near Tweedmouth, in the fields of oats and wheat, we came upon whole gangs of girls cutting down thistles. Each was armed with a kind of reaping-hook at the end of a pole. Very picturesque they looked at a distance in their short dresses of green, grey, pink, or blue. But the remarkable thing about them was this. They all wore bonnets with an immense flap behind, and in front a wonderful contrivance called “an ugly”—a sunshade which quite protected even their noses. And this was not all, for they had the whole of the jaws, chin, and cheeks tied up with immense handkerchiefs, just as the jaws of the dead are sometimes bound up.I could not make it out. Riding on with my tricycle some distance ahead of the Wanderer, I came upon a gang of them—twenty-one in all—having a noontide rest, sitting and reclining on the flowery sward.I could not help stopping to look at them. From the little I could see of their faces some were really pretty. But all these “thistle lassies” had their “uglies” on and their jaws tied up.I stopped and looked, and I could no more help making the following remark than a lark can help singing.“By everything that’s mysterious,” I said, “why have you got your jaws tied up? You’re not dead, and you can’t all have the toothache.”I shall never forget as long as I live the chorus of laughing, the shrieks of laughter, that greeted this innocent little speech of mine. Theydidlaugh, to be sure, and laughed and laughed, and punched each other with open palms, and laughed again, and some had to lie down and roll and laugh. Oh! you just start a Northumbrian lassie laughing, and she will keep it up for a time, I can tell you.But at last a young thing of maybe sweet seventeen let the handkerchief down-drop from her face, detached herself from the squad, and came towards me.She put one little hand on the tricycle wheel, and looked into my face with a pair of eyes as blue and liquid as the sea out yonder.“We tie our chins up,” she said, “to keep the sun off.”“Oh-h-h!” I said; “and to save your beauty.”She nodded, and I rode on.But in speaking of my adventure with the thistle lassies to a man in Berwick—“Yes,” he said, “and those girls on a Sunday come out dressed like ladies in silks and satins.”I remember that our first blink o’ bonnie Scotland was from the hill above Tweedmouth. And yonder below us lay Berwick, with its tall, tapering spires and vermilion-roofed houses. Away to the left, far as eye could reach, sleeping in the sunlight, was the broad and smiling valley of the Tweed. The sea to the right was bright blue in some places, and a slaty grey where cloud shadows fell. It was dotted with many a white sail, with here and there a steamboat, with a wreath of dark smoke, fathoms long, trailing behind it.Berwick-on-Tweed, I have been told more than once, belongs neither to Scotland nor to England. It is neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. It is a county by itself. My royal mistress ought therefore to be called Queen of Great Britain, Berwick, and Ireland. But I will have it thus: Berwickispart and parcel of Scotland. Tell me not of English laws being in force in the pretty town; I maintain that the silvery Tweed is the natural dividing line ’twixt England and the land of mountain and flood.

“Pipe of Northumbria, sound;War pipe of Alnwicke,Wake the wild hills around;Percy at Paynim war.Fenwicke stand foremost;Scots in array from farSwell wide their war-host.“Come clad in your steel jack,Your war gear in order,And down hew or drive backThe Scots o’er the border.”Old Ballad.

“I tell you what it is, my boy,” said a well-known London editor to me one day, shortly before I started on my long tour in the Wanderer,—“I tell you what it is, you’llneverdo it.”

He was standing a little way off my caravan as he spoke, so as to be able to take her all in, optically, and his head was cocked a-trifle to one side, consideringly. “Never do what?”

“Never reach Scotland.”

“Why?”

“Why? First, because a two-ton caravan is too much for even two such horses as you have, considering the hills you will have to encounter; and, secondly,” he added with a sly smile, “because Scotchman never ‘gang back.’”

I seized that little world-wise editor just above the elbow. He looked beseechingly up at me.

“Let go?” he cried; “your fingers are made of iron fencing; my arm isn’t.”

“Can you for one moment imagine,” I said, “what the condition of this England of yours would be were all the Scotchmen to be suddenly taken out of it; suddenly to disappear from great cities like Manchester and Liverpool, from posts of highest duty in London itself, from the Navy, from the Army, from the Volunteers? Is the bare idea not calculated to induce a more dreadful nightmare than even a lobster salad?”

“I think,” said the editor, quietly, as I released him, “we might manage to meet the difficulty.”

But despite the dark forebodings of my neighbours and the insinuations of this editor, here I am in bonnie Scotland.

“My foot in on my native heath,And my name is—”

Well, the reader knows what my name is.

I have pleasant recollections of my last day or two’s drive in Northumberland north, just before entering my native land.

Say from the Blue Bell Hotel at Belford. What a stir there was in that pretty little town, to be sure! We were well out of it, because I got the Wanderer brought to anchor in an immensely large stackyard. There was the sound of the circus’s brass band coming from a field some distance off, the occasional whoop-la! of the merry-go-rounds and patent-swing folks, and the bang-banging of rifles at the itinerant shooting galleries; but that was all there was to disturb us.

I couldn’t help thinking that I never saw brawnier, wirier men than those young farmers who met Earl P— at his political meeting.

I remember being somewhat annoyed at having to start in a procession of gipsy vans, but glad when we got up the hill, and when Pea-blossom and Corn-flower gave them all the slip.

Then the splendid country we passed through; the blue sea away on our right; away to the left the everlasting hills! The long low shores of the Holy Isle flanked by its square-towered castle. It is high water while we pass, and Lindisfarne is wholly an island.

“Stay, coachman, stay; let us think; let us dream; let us imagine ourselves back in the days of long, long ago. Yonder island, my Jehu John, which is now so peacefully slumbering ’neath the midday sun, half shrouded in the blue mist of distance, its lordly castle only a shape, its priory now hidden from our view—

“‘The castle with its battled walls,The ancient monastery’s halls,Yon solemn, huge, and dark-red pile,Placed on the margin of the isle.’

”—Have a history, my gentle Jehu, far more worthy of being listened to than any romance that has ever been conceived or penned.

“Aidan the Christian lived and laboured yonder; from his home in that lone, surf-beaten island scintillated, as from a star, the primitive rays of our religion of love.”

Jehu John (speaks): “Excuse me, sir, but that is all a kind o’ Greek to me.”

“Knowest thou not, my gentle John, that more than a thousand years ago that monastery was built there, that—

“‘In Saxon strength that abbey frownedWith massive arches broad and round,That rose alternate row and rowOn pond’rous columns short and low,Built ere the art was known,By pointed aisle and shafted stalkThe arcades of an alleyed walkTo emulate in stone.On those deep walls the heathen DaneHad poured his impious rage in vain.’

“Hast never heard of Saint Cuthbert?”

“No, sir; can’t say as ever I has.”

“John! John! John! But that wondrous, that ‘mutable and unreasonable saint’ dwelt yonder, nor after death did he rest, John, but was seen by many in divers places and at divers times in this kingdom of Britain the Great! Have you never heard the legend that he sailed down the Tweed in a huge stone coffin?”

“Ha! ha! I can’t quite swallow that, sir.”

“That his figure may even until this day be seen, that—

“‘On a rock by LindisfarneSaint Cuthbert sits and toils to frameThe sea-born beads that bear his name.Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told,And said they might his shape behold,And hear his anvil sound:A deadened clang—a huge dim formSeen but, and heard, when gathering stormAnd night were closing round.’”

“It makes me a kind of eerie, sir, to hear you talk like that.”

“I can’t help it, John; the poetry of the Great Wizard of the North seems still to hang around these shores. I hear it in the leaves that whisper to the winds, in the wild scream of the sea-birds, and in the surf that comes murmuring across that stretch of sand, or goes hissing round the weed-clad rocks.

“But, John, you’ve heard of Grace Darling?”

“Ah! there I do feel at home.”

“Then you know the story. At the Longstone Lighthouse out yonder she lived. You see the castle of Bamburgh, with its square tower, there. We noticed it all day yesterday while coming to Belford; first we took it for a lighthouse, then for a church, but finally a bright stream of sunshine fell on it from behind a cloud—on it, and onitalone, and suddenly we knew it. Well, in the churchyard there the lassie sleeps.”

“Indeed, sir!”

“Shall we drop a tear to her memory, my gentle Jehu?”

“Don’t think I could screw one out, sir.”

“Then drive on, John.”

I remember stopping at a queer old-fashioned Northumbrian inn for the midday halt. We just drew up at the other side of the road. It was a very lonely place. The inn, with its byres and stables, was perched on the top of a rocky hill, and men and horses had to climb like cats to get up to the doors.

By the way, my horses do climb in a wonderful way. Whenever any one now says to me, “There is a terrible hill a few miles on,” “Can a cat get up?” I inquire.

“Oh, yes, sir; a cat could go up,” is the answer.

“Then,” say I, “my horses will do it.”

At this inn was a very, very old man, and a very, very old woman, and their son Brad. Brad was waiter, ostler, everything, tall, slow, and canny-looking.

Brad, like most of the people hereabout, spoke as though he had swallowed a raw potato, and it had stuck in his throat.

Even the North Northumbrian girls talk as if they suffered from chronic tonsillitis, or their tongues were too broad at the base.

When the dinner had been discussed, the dishes washed, and I had had a rest, the horses staggered down the hill and were put in.

I said to Brad, “How much, my friend?”

“Whhateveh yew plhease, sirr; you’gh a ghentleman,” replied Brad, trying apparently to swallow his tongue. I gave him two shillings.

No sooner had it been put in his trousers pocket than the coin started off on a voyage of discovery down his leg, and soon popped out on to the road. Brad evidently had sprung a leak somewhere, and for a time the money kept dropping from him. Whenever he moved he “layed” a coin, so to speak, and the last I saw of Brad he was leaning lazily against a fence counting his money.

I remember that near the borders we climbed a long, long hill, and were so happy when we got to the top of it—the horses panting and foaming, and we all tired and thirsty.

The view of the long stretch of blue hills behind as was very beautiful.

Here on the hilltop was an inn, with its gable and a row of stables facing the road, and here on a bit of grass we drew up, and determined to take the horses out for the midday halt. But we reckoned without our host. The place was called the Cat Inn.

The landlady was in the kitchen, making a huge pie.

No, we could have no stabling. Their own horses would be home in half an hour.

She followed me out.

“Half an hour’s rest,” I said, “out of the sun will do my poor nags some good.”

“I tell ye, ye canna have it,” she snapped.

“Then we can have a bucket or two of water, I suppose?”

“Never a drop. We’ve barely enough for ourselves.”

I offered to pay for it I talked almost angrily.

“Never a drop. You’re no so ceevil.”

Talking of Northumbrian inns, I remember once having a good laugh.

A buxom young lassie, as fresh as a mountain-daisy, had served me, during a halt, with some ginger-ale.

After drinking and putting the glass down on the table, I was drying my long moustache with my handkerchief, and looking at the lassie thoughtfully—I trust not admiringly.

“Ah, sir,” she said, nodding her head and smiling, “ye need na be wiping your mouth; you’re no goin’ to get a kiss fromme.”

But near Tweedmouth, in the fields of oats and wheat, we came upon whole gangs of girls cutting down thistles. Each was armed with a kind of reaping-hook at the end of a pole. Very picturesque they looked at a distance in their short dresses of green, grey, pink, or blue. But the remarkable thing about them was this. They all wore bonnets with an immense flap behind, and in front a wonderful contrivance called “an ugly”—a sunshade which quite protected even their noses. And this was not all, for they had the whole of the jaws, chin, and cheeks tied up with immense handkerchiefs, just as the jaws of the dead are sometimes bound up.

I could not make it out. Riding on with my tricycle some distance ahead of the Wanderer, I came upon a gang of them—twenty-one in all—having a noontide rest, sitting and reclining on the flowery sward.

I could not help stopping to look at them. From the little I could see of their faces some were really pretty. But all these “thistle lassies” had their “uglies” on and their jaws tied up.

I stopped and looked, and I could no more help making the following remark than a lark can help singing.

“By everything that’s mysterious,” I said, “why have you got your jaws tied up? You’re not dead, and you can’t all have the toothache.”

I shall never forget as long as I live the chorus of laughing, the shrieks of laughter, that greeted this innocent little speech of mine. Theydidlaugh, to be sure, and laughed and laughed, and punched each other with open palms, and laughed again, and some had to lie down and roll and laugh. Oh! you just start a Northumbrian lassie laughing, and she will keep it up for a time, I can tell you.

But at last a young thing of maybe sweet seventeen let the handkerchief down-drop from her face, detached herself from the squad, and came towards me.

She put one little hand on the tricycle wheel, and looked into my face with a pair of eyes as blue and liquid as the sea out yonder.

“We tie our chins up,” she said, “to keep the sun off.”

“Oh-h-h!” I said; “and to save your beauty.”

She nodded, and I rode on.

But in speaking of my adventure with the thistle lassies to a man in Berwick—“Yes,” he said, “and those girls on a Sunday come out dressed like ladies in silks and satins.”

I remember that our first blink o’ bonnie Scotland was from the hill above Tweedmouth. And yonder below us lay Berwick, with its tall, tapering spires and vermilion-roofed houses. Away to the left, far as eye could reach, sleeping in the sunlight, was the broad and smiling valley of the Tweed. The sea to the right was bright blue in some places, and a slaty grey where cloud shadows fell. It was dotted with many a white sail, with here and there a steamboat, with a wreath of dark smoke, fathoms long, trailing behind it.

Berwick-on-Tweed, I have been told more than once, belongs neither to Scotland nor to England. It is neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. It is a county by itself. My royal mistress ought therefore to be called Queen of Great Britain, Berwick, and Ireland. But I will have it thus: Berwickispart and parcel of Scotland. Tell me not of English laws being in force in the pretty town; I maintain that the silvery Tweed is the natural dividing line ’twixt England and the land of mountain and flood.

Chapter Seventeen.Scenes in Berwick—Border Marriages—Bonnie Ayton.“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,‘This is my own, my native land;’Whose heart has ne’er within him burnedAs home his weary footsteps, turnedFrom wandering on a foreign strand?”These lines naturally rang through my mind as I rode on my cycle over the old bridge of Tweed. The caravan was a long way behind, so after getting fairly into Berwick I turned and recrossed the bridge, and when I met the Wanderer I gave the tricycle up to Foley, my worthy valet and secretary, for I knew that he too wanted to be able to say in future that he had ridden into Scotland.Yes, the above lines kept ringing through my mind, but those in the same stirring poem that follow I could not truthfully recite as yet—“Oh! Caledonia, stern and wild,Nurse meet for a poetic child;Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,Land of the mountain and the flood.”—Because round Berwick the scenery is not stern and wild, and though there may be roaring floods, the mountains hold pretty far aloof.Through narrow archways, and up the long, steep streets of this border town, toiled the Wanderer. We called at the post-office and got letters, and went on again, seeking in vain for a place of rest. We were nearly out of the town, when, on stopping for a few minutes to breathe the horses, I was accosted by a gentleman, and told him my wants.Ten minutes afterwards the great caravan lay comfortably in a pork-curer’s yard, and the horses were knee-deep in straw in a neighbouring stable.A German it is who owns the place. Taking an afternoon walk through his premises, I was quite astonished at the amount of cleanliness everywhere displayed. Those pigs are positively lapped in luxury; of all sorts and sizes are they, of all ages, of all colours, and of all breeds, from the long-snouted Berkshire to the pug-nosed Yorker, huddled together in every attitude of innocence. Here are two lying in each other’s arms, so to speak, but head and tail. They are two strides long, and sound asleep, only dreaming, and grunting and kicking a little in their dreams. I wonder what pigs do dream about? Green fields, perhaps, hazel copses, and falling nuts and acorns. The owner of this property came in, late in the evening, and we had a pleasant chat for half an hour. About pigs? Yes, about pigs principally—pigs and politics.Probably no town in the three kingdoms has a wilder, more chequered, or more romantic history than the once-circumvallated Berwick-on-Tweed. How far back that history dates is somewhat of a mystery, more in all likelihood than a thousand years, to the days of Kenneth the Second of Scotland. He it was, so it is written, who first made the Tweed the boundary between the two countries. Is it not, however, also said that the whole country north of Newcastle properly belongs to Caledonia? However this may be, Berwick was a bone of contention and a shuttlecock for many a century. Scores of fearful battles were fought in and around it; many a scene of carnage and massacre has its old bell-tower looked down upon; ay, and many a scene of pomp and pageantry as well.“It is a town,” says an old writer, “that has been the delight, nay, but also the ransom of kings—a true Helena, for which many bloody battles have been fought; it has been lost and regained many times within the compass of a century of years, held in the hands of one kingdom for a time, then tossed by the other—a ball that never found rest till the advent of the Union.”Very little, I found, remained of its ancient castle, only a crumbling corner or two, only a few morsels of mouldering ruin, which makes one sad to think of.The atmosphere is not over pure, and there is an all-pervading odour of fried fresh herrings, which a starving man might possibly relish.I saw much of Berwick, but that much I have no space here to describe.Yet I would earnestly advise tourists to make this town their headquarters for a few weeks, and then to make excursions up the Tweed and into the romantic land of Scott and Hogg, the bard of Ettrick.Indeed, the places of interest in this border country that lie on both sides of the Tweed are almost too numerous to be mentioned. Past the Ladies’ Well you would go on your journey up stream, and there you would probably stop to drink, getting therefrom a cup that in reality cheers, but inebriates not. If an invalid, you might drink of this well for weeks, and perhaps continue your journey feeling in every vein and nerve the glad health-blood flowing free, feeling indeed that you had obtained a new lease of life. Onward you would go, pausing soon to look at the beautiful chain bridge, the tree-clad banks, and the merry fisher-boats.Etal you would visit, and be pleased with its quiet beauty, its old castle on the banks of the smooth-flowing Till, and its cottages and gardens, its peace-loving inhabitants and happy children.You would not miss Wooler, if only for the sake of the river and mountain scenery around it.Nor Chillingham, with its parks of wild cattle, though you would take care to keep clear of the maned bulls.If a Scot, while gazing on the battlefield of Flodden sad and melancholy thoughts would arise in your mind, and that mournful but charming song “The Flowers of the Forest” would run through your memory—“I’ve seen Tweed’s silver stream,Glittering in the sunny beam,Grow drumlie and dark as it rolled on its way.O fickle fortune, why this cruel sporting?O, why thus perplex us poor sons of a day?Thy frowns cannot fear me,Thy smiles cannot cheer me,For the Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.”(By the Flowers of the Forest he means the Scottish army at Flodden.)The village of Norham would calm and delight an invalid, however nervous he might be, and the tree-foliage, the flowery sward, the grand old castle ruin once seen on a summer’s day, or even in the quiet summer’s gloaming, could never be forgotten.Need I mention Floors Castle, Kelso Abbey, Melrose Abbey, or the abbeys of Jedburgh and romantic Dryburgh? Scott says—“He who would see Melrose arightMust see it by the pale moonlight.”The same may be said about Dryburgh too.Just a word about Saint Abb’s Head, then I’ll put my horses to, and the Wanderer shall hurry on northwards ho!Here were the nunnery and chapel of Saint Abb, the ruins of the former still to be seen on the top of precipitous cliffs that stand out into the sea. Go, visit Saint Abb’s on a stormy day, when the wild waves are dashing on the rocks, and the sea-birds screaming around. A feeling of such awe will steal over you as probably you never felt before.On the 17th of July, about 2:30 pm, the Wanderer rolled out of Berwick, and at four o’clock we crossed the undisputed line which divides Scotland from sister England.There are two old cottages, one at each side of the road. This is Lamberton.Once there was a toll here, and here clandestine marriages used to be performed by priests, the last of whom died from an accident some time ago.I was told I would see a sign pointing out the house for border marriages, but probably it has been removed. These border marriages were considered a saving in money and in time. The priests were not slow in looking out for custom, and would even suggest marriage to likely couples. One priest is said to have united no less than one thousand five hundred.An old lady came out from the door of one of the cots. I asked her civilly, and I hope pleasantly, if she would marry either my coachman or my valet.She said no, she kept hens, and they were care and trouble enough.I found some ginger-ale in the cheffonier, and had it out, and we all drank—“Here’s a health, bonnie Scotland, to thee.”Then I got the guitar, and sang as the horses trotted merrily on, with music in their footsteps, music in every jingle of their harness, and poetry in their proudly tossing manes.The scenery around us was pleasant enough, but strange. Of the land we could not see half a mile in any direction, for the scenery was a series of great round knolls, or small hills, cultivated to the top, but treeless and bare. It put me in mind of being in the doldrums in the tropics, every knoll or hill representing an immense smooth wave.The sea, close down on our right beneath the green-topped beetling cliffs, was as blue as ever I had known it to be.We stopped for a few minutes to gaze and admire.There was a stiff breeze blowing, that made the Wanderer rock like a ship in a sea-way. There were the scream of gulls, the cawing of rooks, and the whistling of the wind through the ventilators, and the whispering of the waves on the beach beneath the cliffs, but no other sound to break the evening stillness.Within two miles of Ayton the road sweeps inland, and away from the sea, and a beautiful country bursts all at once upon the view.On this evening the sun’s rays slanted downwards from behind great clouds, lighting up the trees and the hills, but causing the firs and spruces that were in shadow to appear almost black.Ayton Castle was passed on the right, just before we crossed the bridge and rattled into the sweet wee town of Ayton itself. The castle is a modern house of somewhat fantastic appearance, but placed upon the braeland there, among the woods, it looks charming, and the braeland itself is a cloudland of green.Ayton is placed in a lovely valley on the River Eye, which goes wimpling and winding round it. The town itself is pretty, rural, quaint, and quiet. I do wonder if it is a health resort or not, or whether turtle-doves go there to spend the honeymoon.If they do not they ought to.The landlord of the hotel where I put my horses, like myself, came from the far north; he soon found me a stand for the Wanderer, a quiet corner in a farmer’s field, where we lay snug enough.Towards sunset about ten waggon loads of happy children passed by. They had been at somefêteor feast. How they did laugh and crow when they saw the great caravan, and how they did wave their green boughs and cheer!What else could I do but wave my hat in return? which had the effect of making them start to their feet and shout till the very welkin rang, and the woods of bonnie Ayton re-echoed the sound.Reader, a word here parenthetically. I was not over-well when I started from home just one month ago. I got up from “the drudgery of the desk’s dull wood” to start on my tour. Now I am hard in flesh, and I have the power to enjoy life as one ought to. Here is an extract from my diary of to-day written on the road:“How brightly the sun is shining. What a delightful sensation of perfect freedom possesses me! I cannot be too thankful to God for this the most enjoyable of all travels or outings I have ever had during a somewhat chequered career. It would hardly be too much to say that at this moment I feel perfectly happy and content, and that is surely saying a deal in a world like this.”

“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,‘This is my own, my native land;’Whose heart has ne’er within him burnedAs home his weary footsteps, turnedFrom wandering on a foreign strand?”

These lines naturally rang through my mind as I rode on my cycle over the old bridge of Tweed. The caravan was a long way behind, so after getting fairly into Berwick I turned and recrossed the bridge, and when I met the Wanderer I gave the tricycle up to Foley, my worthy valet and secretary, for I knew that he too wanted to be able to say in future that he had ridden into Scotland.

Yes, the above lines kept ringing through my mind, but those in the same stirring poem that follow I could not truthfully recite as yet—

“Oh! Caledonia, stern and wild,Nurse meet for a poetic child;Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,Land of the mountain and the flood.”

—Because round Berwick the scenery is not stern and wild, and though there may be roaring floods, the mountains hold pretty far aloof.

Through narrow archways, and up the long, steep streets of this border town, toiled the Wanderer. We called at the post-office and got letters, and went on again, seeking in vain for a place of rest. We were nearly out of the town, when, on stopping for a few minutes to breathe the horses, I was accosted by a gentleman, and told him my wants.

Ten minutes afterwards the great caravan lay comfortably in a pork-curer’s yard, and the horses were knee-deep in straw in a neighbouring stable.

A German it is who owns the place. Taking an afternoon walk through his premises, I was quite astonished at the amount of cleanliness everywhere displayed. Those pigs are positively lapped in luxury; of all sorts and sizes are they, of all ages, of all colours, and of all breeds, from the long-snouted Berkshire to the pug-nosed Yorker, huddled together in every attitude of innocence. Here are two lying in each other’s arms, so to speak, but head and tail. They are two strides long, and sound asleep, only dreaming, and grunting and kicking a little in their dreams. I wonder what pigs do dream about? Green fields, perhaps, hazel copses, and falling nuts and acorns. The owner of this property came in, late in the evening, and we had a pleasant chat for half an hour. About pigs? Yes, about pigs principally—pigs and politics.

Probably no town in the three kingdoms has a wilder, more chequered, or more romantic history than the once-circumvallated Berwick-on-Tweed. How far back that history dates is somewhat of a mystery, more in all likelihood than a thousand years, to the days of Kenneth the Second of Scotland. He it was, so it is written, who first made the Tweed the boundary between the two countries. Is it not, however, also said that the whole country north of Newcastle properly belongs to Caledonia? However this may be, Berwick was a bone of contention and a shuttlecock for many a century. Scores of fearful battles were fought in and around it; many a scene of carnage and massacre has its old bell-tower looked down upon; ay, and many a scene of pomp and pageantry as well.

“It is a town,” says an old writer, “that has been the delight, nay, but also the ransom of kings—a true Helena, for which many bloody battles have been fought; it has been lost and regained many times within the compass of a century of years, held in the hands of one kingdom for a time, then tossed by the other—a ball that never found rest till the advent of the Union.”

Very little, I found, remained of its ancient castle, only a crumbling corner or two, only a few morsels of mouldering ruin, which makes one sad to think of.

The atmosphere is not over pure, and there is an all-pervading odour of fried fresh herrings, which a starving man might possibly relish.

I saw much of Berwick, but that much I have no space here to describe.

Yet I would earnestly advise tourists to make this town their headquarters for a few weeks, and then to make excursions up the Tweed and into the romantic land of Scott and Hogg, the bard of Ettrick.

Indeed, the places of interest in this border country that lie on both sides of the Tweed are almost too numerous to be mentioned. Past the Ladies’ Well you would go on your journey up stream, and there you would probably stop to drink, getting therefrom a cup that in reality cheers, but inebriates not. If an invalid, you might drink of this well for weeks, and perhaps continue your journey feeling in every vein and nerve the glad health-blood flowing free, feeling indeed that you had obtained a new lease of life. Onward you would go, pausing soon to look at the beautiful chain bridge, the tree-clad banks, and the merry fisher-boats.

Etal you would visit, and be pleased with its quiet beauty, its old castle on the banks of the smooth-flowing Till, and its cottages and gardens, its peace-loving inhabitants and happy children.

You would not miss Wooler, if only for the sake of the river and mountain scenery around it.

Nor Chillingham, with its parks of wild cattle, though you would take care to keep clear of the maned bulls.

If a Scot, while gazing on the battlefield of Flodden sad and melancholy thoughts would arise in your mind, and that mournful but charming song “The Flowers of the Forest” would run through your memory—

“I’ve seen Tweed’s silver stream,Glittering in the sunny beam,Grow drumlie and dark as it rolled on its way.O fickle fortune, why this cruel sporting?O, why thus perplex us poor sons of a day?Thy frowns cannot fear me,Thy smiles cannot cheer me,For the Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.”(By the Flowers of the Forest he means the Scottish army at Flodden.)

The village of Norham would calm and delight an invalid, however nervous he might be, and the tree-foliage, the flowery sward, the grand old castle ruin once seen on a summer’s day, or even in the quiet summer’s gloaming, could never be forgotten.

Need I mention Floors Castle, Kelso Abbey, Melrose Abbey, or the abbeys of Jedburgh and romantic Dryburgh? Scott says—

“He who would see Melrose arightMust see it by the pale moonlight.”

The same may be said about Dryburgh too.

Just a word about Saint Abb’s Head, then I’ll put my horses to, and the Wanderer shall hurry on northwards ho!

Here were the nunnery and chapel of Saint Abb, the ruins of the former still to be seen on the top of precipitous cliffs that stand out into the sea. Go, visit Saint Abb’s on a stormy day, when the wild waves are dashing on the rocks, and the sea-birds screaming around. A feeling of such awe will steal over you as probably you never felt before.

On the 17th of July, about 2:30 pm, the Wanderer rolled out of Berwick, and at four o’clock we crossed the undisputed line which divides Scotland from sister England.

There are two old cottages, one at each side of the road. This is Lamberton.

Once there was a toll here, and here clandestine marriages used to be performed by priests, the last of whom died from an accident some time ago.

I was told I would see a sign pointing out the house for border marriages, but probably it has been removed. These border marriages were considered a saving in money and in time. The priests were not slow in looking out for custom, and would even suggest marriage to likely couples. One priest is said to have united no less than one thousand five hundred.

An old lady came out from the door of one of the cots. I asked her civilly, and I hope pleasantly, if she would marry either my coachman or my valet.

She said no, she kept hens, and they were care and trouble enough.

I found some ginger-ale in the cheffonier, and had it out, and we all drank—

“Here’s a health, bonnie Scotland, to thee.”

Then I got the guitar, and sang as the horses trotted merrily on, with music in their footsteps, music in every jingle of their harness, and poetry in their proudly tossing manes.

The scenery around us was pleasant enough, but strange. Of the land we could not see half a mile in any direction, for the scenery was a series of great round knolls, or small hills, cultivated to the top, but treeless and bare. It put me in mind of being in the doldrums in the tropics, every knoll or hill representing an immense smooth wave.

The sea, close down on our right beneath the green-topped beetling cliffs, was as blue as ever I had known it to be.

We stopped for a few minutes to gaze and admire.

There was a stiff breeze blowing, that made the Wanderer rock like a ship in a sea-way. There were the scream of gulls, the cawing of rooks, and the whistling of the wind through the ventilators, and the whispering of the waves on the beach beneath the cliffs, but no other sound to break the evening stillness.

Within two miles of Ayton the road sweeps inland, and away from the sea, and a beautiful country bursts all at once upon the view.

On this evening the sun’s rays slanted downwards from behind great clouds, lighting up the trees and the hills, but causing the firs and spruces that were in shadow to appear almost black.

Ayton Castle was passed on the right, just before we crossed the bridge and rattled into the sweet wee town of Ayton itself. The castle is a modern house of somewhat fantastic appearance, but placed upon the braeland there, among the woods, it looks charming, and the braeland itself is a cloudland of green.

Ayton is placed in a lovely valley on the River Eye, which goes wimpling and winding round it. The town itself is pretty, rural, quaint, and quiet. I do wonder if it is a health resort or not, or whether turtle-doves go there to spend the honeymoon.

If they do not they ought to.

The landlord of the hotel where I put my horses, like myself, came from the far north; he soon found me a stand for the Wanderer, a quiet corner in a farmer’s field, where we lay snug enough.

Towards sunset about ten waggon loads of happy children passed by. They had been at somefêteor feast. How they did laugh and crow when they saw the great caravan, and how they did wave their green boughs and cheer!

What else could I do but wave my hat in return? which had the effect of making them start to their feet and shout till the very welkin rang, and the woods of bonnie Ayton re-echoed the sound.

Reader, a word here parenthetically. I was not over-well when I started from home just one month ago. I got up from “the drudgery of the desk’s dull wood” to start on my tour. Now I am hard in flesh, and I have the power to enjoy life as one ought to. Here is an extract from my diary of to-day written on the road:

“How brightly the sun is shining. What a delightful sensation of perfect freedom possesses me! I cannot be too thankful to God for this the most enjoyable of all travels or outings I have ever had during a somewhat chequered career. It would hardly be too much to say that at this moment I feel perfectly happy and content, and that is surely saying a deal in a world like this.”

Chapter Eighteen.The Journey to Dunbar—A Rainy Day.“I lay upon the headland height and listenedTo the incessant sobbing of the seaIn caverns under me,And watched the waves that tossed and fled and glistened,Until the rolling meadows of amethystMelted away in mist.”Longfellow.July 18th.We make an early start this morning. The horses are in, and we are out of the field before eight o’clock. We have a long journey before us—three-and-twenty miles to Dunbar—and do it we must.It is raining in torrents; every hilltop is wrapped in mist as in a gauze veil. The country is fertile, but trees and hedges are dripping, and if the hills are high, we know it not, seeing only their foundations.About four miles on, the road enters a beautiful wood of oak, through which the path goes winding. There is clovery sward on each side, and the trees almost meet overhead.Some six miles from Co’burn’s path we stop at a small wayside grocery to oil the wheel-caps, which have got hot. I purchase here the most delicious butter ever I tasted for ten pence a pound. The rain has ceased, and the breaking clouds give promise of a fine day.I inquire of a crofter how far it is to Inverness.“Inverness?” he ejaculates, with eyes as big as florins. “Man! it’s a far cry to Inverness.”On again, passing for miles through a pretty country, but nowhere is there an extensive view, for the hills are close around us, and the road is a very winding one. It winds and it “wimples” through among green knolls and bosky glens; it dips into deep, deep dells, and rises over tree-clad steeps.This may read romantic enough, but, truth to tell, we like neither the dips nor the rises.But look at this charming wood close on our right, a great bank of sturdy old oaks and birches, and among them wild roses are blooming—for even here in Scotland the roses have not yet deserted us. Those birken trees, how they perfume the summer air around us! From among the brackens that grow beneath, so rank and green, rich crimson foxglove bells are peeping, and a thousand other flowers make this wild bank a thing of beauty. Surely by moonlight the fairies haunt it and hold their revels here.We pass by many a quiet and rural hamlet, the cottages in which are of the most primitive style of architecture, but everywhere gay with gardens, flowers, and climbing plants. It does one good to behold them. Porches are greatly in vogue, very rustic ones, made of fir-trees with the bark left on, but none the less lovely on that account.Here is the porch of a house in which surely superstition still lingers, for the porch, and even the windows, are surrounded with honeysuckle and rowan. (Rowan, or rantle tree,—the mountain ash.)“Rantle tree and wood-binTo haud the witches on come in.”(To keep the witches out.)The mists have cleared away.We soon come to a high hill overtopped by a wood. There are clearings here and there in this wood, and these are draped with purple heath, and just beneath that crimson patch yonder is a dark cave-like hole. That is the mouth of a loathsome railway tunnel. There may be a people-laden train in it now. From my heart I pity them.Theyare in the dark, we in the sunshine, with the cool breeze blowing in our faces, and as free as the birds.Weare on the hill;theyare in the hole.As we near Co’burn’s path the scenery gets more and more romantic. A peep at that wondrous tree-clad hill to the right is worth a king’s ransom. And the best of it is that to-day we have all the road to ourselves.I stopped by a brook a few minutes ago to cull some splendid wild flowers. A great water-rat (bank-vole) eyed me curiously for a few moments, then disappeared with a splash in the water as if he had been a miniature water-kelpie. High up among the woods I could hear the plaintive croodling of the cushie-doo, or wild pigeon, and Dear me, on a thorn-bush, the pitiful “Chick-chick-chick-chick-chee-e-e” of the yellow-hammer. But save these sweet sounds all was silent, and the road and country seemed deserted. Where are our tourists? where our health and pleasure-seekers? “Doing” Scotland somewhere on beaten tracks, following each other as do the wild geese.We climb a hill; we descend into a deep and wooded ravine, dark even at midday, cross a most romantic bridge, and the horses claw the road as they stagger up again.A fine old ruined castle among the pinewoods. It has a story, which here I may not tell.If ever, reader, you come this way, visit Pease Dene and the bridge. What a minglement is here of the beautiful in art and the awesome in nature!Are you fond of history? Well, here in this very spot, where the Wanderer rests for a little time, did Cromwell, with his terrible battle-cry, “The Lord of hosts,” defeat the Scottish Covenanters. It was a fearful tulzie; I shudder when I look round and think of it.“Drive on, John, drive on.”All round Co’burn’s path is a wild land of romance. But here is the hamlet itself.The inn—there is but one—stands boldly by the roadside; the little village itself hides upon a wooded braeland away behind.“Is it a large village?” I inquired.“No,” was the canny Scotch reply, “not soveralarge. It is just a middlin’ bit o’ a village.”So I found it when I rode round, averymiddling bit of a village indeed.The shore is about half a mile from the road. It is bounded by tall steep cliffs, and many of these are pierced by caves. The marks of chisels are visible on their walls, and in troublous times they were doubtless the hiding-places of unfortunate families, but more recently they were used by smugglers, concerning which the hills about here, could they but speak, would tell many a strange story.Dined and baited at Co’burn’s path, and started on again. And now the rain began to come down in earnest—Scotch rain, not Scotch mist, rain in continuous streams that fell on the road with a force that caused it to rebound again, and break into a mist which lay all along the ground a good foot deep.Nothing could touch us in our well-built caravan, however; we could afford to look at the rain with a complacency somewhat embittered with pity for the horses.The country through which we are now passing is beautiful, or would be on a fine day. It is a rolling land, and well-treed, but everything is a blur at present, and half hidden by the terrible rain.When we reached Dunbar at last, we found the romantic and pretty town all astir. The yeomanry had been holding their annual races, and great was the excitement among both sexes, despite the downpour.It was an hour or two before I could find a place to stand in. I succeeded at last in getting on to the top of the west cliff, but myself and valet had to work hard for twenty minutes before we got in here. We chartered a soldier, who helped us manfully to enlarge a gap, by taking down a stone wall and levelling the footpath.At Dunbar, on this cliff-top, from which there was a splendid view of the ever-changing sea, I lay for several days, making excursions hither and thither, and enjoying the sea-bathing.(For further notes about pleasant excursions, fishing streams, etc, see my “Rota Vitae; or, Cyclist’s Guide to Health and Rational Enjoyment.” Price 1 shilling. Published by Messrs Iliffe and Co, Fleet Street, London.)The ancient town of Dunbar is too well-known to need description by me, although every one is entitled to talk about a place as he finds it. Dunbar, then, let me say parenthetically, is a town of plain substantial stone, with many charming villas around it. It has at least one very wide and spacious street, and it has the ruins of an ancient castle—no one seems to know how ancient; it has been the scene of many a bloody battle, and has a deal otherwise to boast about in a historical way.I found the people exceedingly kind and hospitable, and frank and free as well.English people ought to know that Dunbar is an excellent place for bathing, that it is an extremely healthy town, and could be made the headquarters for tourists wishing to visit the thousand and one places of interest and romance around it.But it was the rock scenery that threw a glamour over me. It is indescribably wild and beautiful here. These rocks are always fantastic, but like the sea that lisps around their feet in fine weather, or dashes in curling wreaths of snow-white foam high over their summits, when a nor’-east storm is blowing, they are, or seem to be, ever-changing in appearance, never quite the same. Only, one rock on the horizon is ever the same, the Bass.When the tide is back pools are left among the rocks; here bare-legged children dabble and play and catch the strange little fishes that have been left behind.To see those children, by the way, hanging like bees—in bunches—on the dizzy cliff-tops and close to the edge, makes one’s heart at times almost stand still with fear for their safety.There is food here for the naturalist, enjoyment for the healthy, and health itself for the invalid. I shall be happy indeed if what I write about the place shall induce tourists to visit this fine town.On the morning of the 23rd of July we left Dunbar, after a visit from the Provost and some members of the town council. Sturdy chiels, not one under six feet high, and broad and hard in proportion. An army of such men might have hurled Cromwell and all his hordes over the cliffs to feed the skate—that is,ifthere were giants in those days.We got out and away from the grand old town just as the park of artillery opened fire from their great guns on their red-flagged targets far out to sea. Fife-shire Militia these soldiers are, under command of Colonel the Hon. — Halket. Mostly miners, sturdy, strong fellows, and, like the gallant officer commanding them, soldierly in bearing.I fear, however, that the good folks of Dunbar hardly appreciate the firing of big guns quite so close to their windows, especially when a salvo is attempted. This latter means shivered glass, frightened ladies, startled invalids, and maddened dogs and cats. The dogs I am told get into cupboards, and the cats bolt up the chimneys.The first day of the firing an officer was sent to tell me that the Wanderer was not lying in quite a safe position, as shells sometimes burst shortly after leaving the gun’s mouth. I took my chance, however, and all went well. Alas for poor Hurricane Bob, however! I have never seen a dog before in such an abject state of shivering terror. The shock to his system ended in sickness of a painful and distressing character, and it was one o’clock in the morning before he recovered.One o’clock, and what a night of gloom it was! The sky over hills and over the ocean was completely obscured, with only here and there a lurid brown rift, showing where the feeble rays of moon and stars were trying to struggle through.The wind was moaning among the black and beetling crags; far down beneath was the white froth of the breaking waves, while ever and anon from seaward came the bright sharp flash of the summer lightning. So vivid was it that at first I took it for a gun, and listened for the report.It was a dreary night, a night to make one shiver as if under the shadow of some coming evil.

“I lay upon the headland height and listenedTo the incessant sobbing of the seaIn caverns under me,And watched the waves that tossed and fled and glistened,Until the rolling meadows of amethystMelted away in mist.”Longfellow.

July 18th.

We make an early start this morning. The horses are in, and we are out of the field before eight o’clock. We have a long journey before us—three-and-twenty miles to Dunbar—and do it we must.

It is raining in torrents; every hilltop is wrapped in mist as in a gauze veil. The country is fertile, but trees and hedges are dripping, and if the hills are high, we know it not, seeing only their foundations.

About four miles on, the road enters a beautiful wood of oak, through which the path goes winding. There is clovery sward on each side, and the trees almost meet overhead.

Some six miles from Co’burn’s path we stop at a small wayside grocery to oil the wheel-caps, which have got hot. I purchase here the most delicious butter ever I tasted for ten pence a pound. The rain has ceased, and the breaking clouds give promise of a fine day.

I inquire of a crofter how far it is to Inverness.

“Inverness?” he ejaculates, with eyes as big as florins. “Man! it’s a far cry to Inverness.”

On again, passing for miles through a pretty country, but nowhere is there an extensive view, for the hills are close around us, and the road is a very winding one. It winds and it “wimples” through among green knolls and bosky glens; it dips into deep, deep dells, and rises over tree-clad steeps.

This may read romantic enough, but, truth to tell, we like neither the dips nor the rises.

But look at this charming wood close on our right, a great bank of sturdy old oaks and birches, and among them wild roses are blooming—for even here in Scotland the roses have not yet deserted us. Those birken trees, how they perfume the summer air around us! From among the brackens that grow beneath, so rank and green, rich crimson foxglove bells are peeping, and a thousand other flowers make this wild bank a thing of beauty. Surely by moonlight the fairies haunt it and hold their revels here.

We pass by many a quiet and rural hamlet, the cottages in which are of the most primitive style of architecture, but everywhere gay with gardens, flowers, and climbing plants. It does one good to behold them. Porches are greatly in vogue, very rustic ones, made of fir-trees with the bark left on, but none the less lovely on that account.

Here is the porch of a house in which surely superstition still lingers, for the porch, and even the windows, are surrounded with honeysuckle and rowan. (Rowan, or rantle tree,—the mountain ash.)

“Rantle tree and wood-binTo haud the witches on come in.”(To keep the witches out.)

The mists have cleared away.

We soon come to a high hill overtopped by a wood. There are clearings here and there in this wood, and these are draped with purple heath, and just beneath that crimson patch yonder is a dark cave-like hole. That is the mouth of a loathsome railway tunnel. There may be a people-laden train in it now. From my heart I pity them.Theyare in the dark, we in the sunshine, with the cool breeze blowing in our faces, and as free as the birds.Weare on the hill;theyare in the hole.

As we near Co’burn’s path the scenery gets more and more romantic. A peep at that wondrous tree-clad hill to the right is worth a king’s ransom. And the best of it is that to-day we have all the road to ourselves.

I stopped by a brook a few minutes ago to cull some splendid wild flowers. A great water-rat (bank-vole) eyed me curiously for a few moments, then disappeared with a splash in the water as if he had been a miniature water-kelpie. High up among the woods I could hear the plaintive croodling of the cushie-doo, or wild pigeon, and Dear me, on a thorn-bush, the pitiful “Chick-chick-chick-chick-chee-e-e” of the yellow-hammer. But save these sweet sounds all was silent, and the road and country seemed deserted. Where are our tourists? where our health and pleasure-seekers? “Doing” Scotland somewhere on beaten tracks, following each other as do the wild geese.

We climb a hill; we descend into a deep and wooded ravine, dark even at midday, cross a most romantic bridge, and the horses claw the road as they stagger up again.

A fine old ruined castle among the pinewoods. It has a story, which here I may not tell.

If ever, reader, you come this way, visit Pease Dene and the bridge. What a minglement is here of the beautiful in art and the awesome in nature!

Are you fond of history? Well, here in this very spot, where the Wanderer rests for a little time, did Cromwell, with his terrible battle-cry, “The Lord of hosts,” defeat the Scottish Covenanters. It was a fearful tulzie; I shudder when I look round and think of it.

“Drive on, John, drive on.”

All round Co’burn’s path is a wild land of romance. But here is the hamlet itself.

The inn—there is but one—stands boldly by the roadside; the little village itself hides upon a wooded braeland away behind.

“Is it a large village?” I inquired.

“No,” was the canny Scotch reply, “not soveralarge. It is just a middlin’ bit o’ a village.”

So I found it when I rode round, averymiddling bit of a village indeed.

The shore is about half a mile from the road. It is bounded by tall steep cliffs, and many of these are pierced by caves. The marks of chisels are visible on their walls, and in troublous times they were doubtless the hiding-places of unfortunate families, but more recently they were used by smugglers, concerning which the hills about here, could they but speak, would tell many a strange story.

Dined and baited at Co’burn’s path, and started on again. And now the rain began to come down in earnest—Scotch rain, not Scotch mist, rain in continuous streams that fell on the road with a force that caused it to rebound again, and break into a mist which lay all along the ground a good foot deep.

Nothing could touch us in our well-built caravan, however; we could afford to look at the rain with a complacency somewhat embittered with pity for the horses.

The country through which we are now passing is beautiful, or would be on a fine day. It is a rolling land, and well-treed, but everything is a blur at present, and half hidden by the terrible rain.

When we reached Dunbar at last, we found the romantic and pretty town all astir. The yeomanry had been holding their annual races, and great was the excitement among both sexes, despite the downpour.

It was an hour or two before I could find a place to stand in. I succeeded at last in getting on to the top of the west cliff, but myself and valet had to work hard for twenty minutes before we got in here. We chartered a soldier, who helped us manfully to enlarge a gap, by taking down a stone wall and levelling the footpath.

At Dunbar, on this cliff-top, from which there was a splendid view of the ever-changing sea, I lay for several days, making excursions hither and thither, and enjoying the sea-bathing.

(For further notes about pleasant excursions, fishing streams, etc, see my “Rota Vitae; or, Cyclist’s Guide to Health and Rational Enjoyment.” Price 1 shilling. Published by Messrs Iliffe and Co, Fleet Street, London.)

The ancient town of Dunbar is too well-known to need description by me, although every one is entitled to talk about a place as he finds it. Dunbar, then, let me say parenthetically, is a town of plain substantial stone, with many charming villas around it. It has at least one very wide and spacious street, and it has the ruins of an ancient castle—no one seems to know how ancient; it has been the scene of many a bloody battle, and has a deal otherwise to boast about in a historical way.

I found the people exceedingly kind and hospitable, and frank and free as well.

English people ought to know that Dunbar is an excellent place for bathing, that it is an extremely healthy town, and could be made the headquarters for tourists wishing to visit the thousand and one places of interest and romance around it.

But it was the rock scenery that threw a glamour over me. It is indescribably wild and beautiful here. These rocks are always fantastic, but like the sea that lisps around their feet in fine weather, or dashes in curling wreaths of snow-white foam high over their summits, when a nor’-east storm is blowing, they are, or seem to be, ever-changing in appearance, never quite the same. Only, one rock on the horizon is ever the same, the Bass.

When the tide is back pools are left among the rocks; here bare-legged children dabble and play and catch the strange little fishes that have been left behind.

To see those children, by the way, hanging like bees—in bunches—on the dizzy cliff-tops and close to the edge, makes one’s heart at times almost stand still with fear for their safety.

There is food here for the naturalist, enjoyment for the healthy, and health itself for the invalid. I shall be happy indeed if what I write about the place shall induce tourists to visit this fine town.

On the morning of the 23rd of July we left Dunbar, after a visit from the Provost and some members of the town council. Sturdy chiels, not one under six feet high, and broad and hard in proportion. An army of such men might have hurled Cromwell and all his hordes over the cliffs to feed the skate—that is,ifthere were giants in those days.

We got out and away from the grand old town just as the park of artillery opened fire from their great guns on their red-flagged targets far out to sea. Fife-shire Militia these soldiers are, under command of Colonel the Hon. — Halket. Mostly miners, sturdy, strong fellows, and, like the gallant officer commanding them, soldierly in bearing.

I fear, however, that the good folks of Dunbar hardly appreciate the firing of big guns quite so close to their windows, especially when a salvo is attempted. This latter means shivered glass, frightened ladies, startled invalids, and maddened dogs and cats. The dogs I am told get into cupboards, and the cats bolt up the chimneys.

The first day of the firing an officer was sent to tell me that the Wanderer was not lying in quite a safe position, as shells sometimes burst shortly after leaving the gun’s mouth. I took my chance, however, and all went well. Alas for poor Hurricane Bob, however! I have never seen a dog before in such an abject state of shivering terror. The shock to his system ended in sickness of a painful and distressing character, and it was one o’clock in the morning before he recovered.

One o’clock, and what a night of gloom it was! The sky over hills and over the ocean was completely obscured, with only here and there a lurid brown rift, showing where the feeble rays of moon and stars were trying to struggle through.

The wind was moaning among the black and beetling crags; far down beneath was the white froth of the breaking waves, while ever and anon from seaward came the bright sharp flash of the summer lightning. So vivid was it that at first I took it for a gun, and listened for the report.

It was a dreary night, a night to make one shiver as if under the shadow of some coming evil.

Chapter Nineteen.A Day at Pressmannan—The Fight for a Polonie Sausage—In the Haughs of Haddington—Mrs Carlile’s Grave—Genuine Hospitality.“Here springs the oak, the beauty of the grove,Whose stately trunk fierce storms can scarcely move;Here grows the cedar, here the swelling vineDoes round the elm its purple clusters twine;Here painted flowers the smiling gardens bless,Both with their fragrant scent and gaudy dress;Here the white lily in full beauty grows;Here the blue violet and the blushing rose.”Blackmore.Had a gale of wind come on to blow during our stay at Dunbar, our position on the green cliff-top would undoubtedly have been a somewhat perilous one, for the wind takes a powerful hold of the Wanderer. Perhaps it was this fact which caused my illustrious valet and factotum to write some verses parodying the nursery rhyme of “Hush-a-bye baby, upon the tree top.” I only remember the first of these:—“Poor weary Wanderer on the cliff-top,If the wind blows the carriage will rock,If gale should come on over she’ll fallDown over the cliff, doctor and all.”Perhaps one of the most pleasant outings I had when at Dunbar was my visit to the beautiful loch of Pressmannan.I give here a short sketch of it to show that a gentleman gipsy’s life is not only confined to the places to which he can travel in his caravan. The Wanderer is quite a Pullman car, and cannot be turned on narrow roads, while its great height causes overhanging trees to form very serious obstacles indeed.But I have my tricycle. I can go anywhere on her. Well, but if I want to take a companion with me on some short tour where the Wanderer cannot go, it is always easy to borrow a dogcart, pop Pea-blossom into the shafts, and scud away like the wind. This is what I did when I made up my mind to spend—A Day at Pressmannan.I would have preferred going alone on my cycle with a book and my fishing-rod, but Hurricane Bob unfortunately—unlike the infant Jumbo—is no cyclist, and a twenty-miles’ run on a warm summer’s day would have been too much for the noble fellow. Nor could he be left, in the caravan to be frightened out of his poor wits with thundering cannon and bursting shells. Hence Pea-blossom and a light elegant phaeton, with Bob at my feet on his rugs.We left about ten am, just before the guns began to roar.The day was warm and somewhat hazy, a kind of heat-mist.Soon after rattling out of Dunbar we passed through a rural village. We bore away to the right, and now the scenery opened up and became very interesting indeed.Away beneath us on our right—we were journeying north-west—was a broad sandy bay, on which the waves were breaking lazily in long rolling lines of foam. Far off and ahead of us the lofty and solid-looking Berwick Law could be seen, rising high over the wooded hills on the horizon with a beautiful forest land all between.Down now through an avenue of lofty beeches and maples that makes this part of the road a sylvan tunnel. We pass the lodge-gates of Pitcox, and in there is a park of lordly deer.On our left now are immensely large rolling fields of potatoes. These supply the southern markets, and thepomme de terreis even shipped, I believe, from this country to America. There is not a weed to be seen anywhere among the rows, all are clean and tidy and well earthed up.No poetry about a potato field? Is that the remark you make, dear reader? You should see these even furrows of darkest green, going high up and low down among the hills; and is there any flower, I ask, much prettier than that of the potato? But there we come to the cosy many-gabled farmhouse itself. How different it is from anything one sees in Yorks or Berkshire, for instance! A modern house of no mean pretensions, built high up on a knoll, built of solid stone, with bay windows, with gardens, lawns, and terraces, and nicely-wooded winding avenues. About a mile farther on, and near to the rural hamlet of Stenton, we stop to gaze at and make conjectures about a strange-looking monument about ten feet high, that stands within a rude enclosure, where dank green nettles grow.What is it, I wonder? I peep inside the door, but can make nothing of it. Is it the tomb of a saint? a battlefield memorial? the old village well? or the top of the steeple blown down in a gale of wind?We strike off the main road here and drive away up a narrow lane with a charming hedgerow at each side, in which the crimson sweetbriar-roses mingle prettily with the dark-green of privet, and the lighter green of the holly.At the top of the hill the tourist may well pause, as we did, to look at the view beneath. It is a fertile country, only you cannot help admiring the woods that adorn that wide valley—woods in patches of every size and shape, woods in rows around the cornfields, woods in squares and ovals, woods upon hills and knolls, and single trees everywhere.On again, and ere long we catch sight of a great braeland of trees—a perfect mountain of foliage—worth the journey to come and see. That hill rises up from the other side of the loch. We now open a gate, and find ourselves in a very large green square, with farm buildings at one side and a great stone well in the centre. Far beneath, and peeping through the trees, is the beautiful mansion-like model farmhouse. It is surrounded by gardens, in which flowers of every colour expand their petals to the sunshine. No one is at home about the farmyard. The servants are all away haymaking, so we quietly unlimber, stable, and feed Pea-blossom. Hurricane Bob, my Jehu, and myself then pass down the hill through a wood of noble trees, and at once find ourselves on the margin of a splendid sheet of water that winds for miles and miles among the woodlands and hills.I seat myself in an easy-chair near the boathouse, a chair that surely some good fairy or the genii of this beautiful wildery has placed here for me. Then I become lapt in Elysium. Ten minutes ago I could not have believed that such scenery existed so near me.What a lonesome delightful place to spend a long summer’s day in! What a place for a picnic or for a lover’s walk! Oh! to fancy it with a broad moon shining down from the sky and reflected in the water!The road goes through among the trees, not far from the water’s edge, winding as the lake winds. The water to-day is like a sheet of glass, only every now and then and every here and there a leaping fish makes rings in it; swallows are skimming about everywhere, and seagulls go wheeling round or settle and float on the surface. We see many a covey of wild ducks too, but no creature—not even the hares and rabbits among the brackens—appear afraid of us.Nowhere are the trees of great height, but there is hardly one you can give a name to which you will not find here by the banks of this lovely lonesome lake, to say nothing of the gorgeous and glowing undergrowth of wild shrubs and wild flowers.Weary at last, because hungry, we returned to the green square where we had left our carriage, and, first giving Pea-blossom water, proceeded to have our own luncheon.We had enough for the three of us, with plenty to spare for the feathered army of fowls that surrounded us. They were daring; they were greedy; they were insolent; and stole the food from our very fingers.Ambition in this world, however, sometimes over-reaches itself. One half-bred chick at last stole a whole polonie, which was to have formed part of Bob’s dinner. Bob knew it, and looked woefully after the thieving chick; the brave little bird was hurrying off to find a quiet place in which to make its dinner.It had reckoned rather rashly, though.A cochin hen met the chick. “What daring audacity!” cried the hen. “Setyouup with a whole polonie, indeed!”A dig on the back sent the chick screaming away without the sausage, and the big hen secured it.“I’ll go quietly away and eat it,” she said to herself, “behind the water-butt.”But the other fowls spied her.“Why, she’s got a whole polonie!” cried one.“The impudence of the brazen thing!” cried another.“A whole polonie! a whole polonie!” was now the chorus, and the chase became general. Round and round the great stone wall flew the cochin, but she was finally caught and thrashed and deprived of that polonie. But which hen was to have it? Oh! every hen, and all the four cocks wanted it.A more amusing scene I never witnessed at a farmyard. It was like an exciting game of football on the old Rugby system, and at one time, while the game was still going on, I counted three pairs of hens and one pair of Dorking cocks engaged in deadly combat, and all about that polonie. But sly old Bob watched his chance.Hewas not going to lose his dinner if he could help it. He went round and lay flat down behind the well, and waited. Presently the battle raged in that direction, when suddenly, with one glorious spring, Bob flung himself into the midst of the conflict. The fowls scattered and fluttered and fled, and flew in all directions, and next minute the great Newfoundland, wagging his saucy tail and laughing with his eyes, was enjoying his polonie as he lay at my feet.Returning homewards, instead of passing the Pitcox lodge-gate, we boldly enter it; I cannot help feeling that I am guilty of trespass. However, we immediately find ourselves in a great rolling park, with delightful sylvan scenery on every side, with a river—the winding Papana—meandering through the midst of the glen far down beneath and to the right.After a drive of about a mile we descend by a winding road into this glen, and cross the river by a fine bridge. Then going on and on, we enter the archway, and presently are in front of the mansion house of Biel itself. It is a grand old place, a house of solid masonry, a house of square and octangular towers, long and low and strong.It is the seat of a branch of the Hamilton ilk. Miss Hamilton was not then at home.“No, the lady is not at home at present, sir,” a baker who was driving a cart informed me, “but it would have been all one, sir. Every one is welcome to look at the place and grounds, and she would have been glad to see you.”We really had stopped at the back of the house, which is built facing the glen, but I soon found my way to the front.I cannot describe the beauty of those terraced gardens, that one after another led down to the green glen beneath, where the river was winding as if loth to leave so sweet a place. They were ablaze with flowers, the grass in the dingle below was very green, the waters sparkled in the sunlight, and beyond the river the braeland was a rolling cloudland of green trees.We drove out by an avenue—two miles long—bordered by young firs and cypresses.Altogether, the estate is a kind of earthly paradise.And think of it being constantly open to tourist or visitor!“What a kind lady that Miss Hamilton must be, sir!” said my coachman.“Yes, John,” I replied. “This is somewhat different from our treatment at Newstead Abbey.”I referred to the fact that on my arrival at the gates of the park around that historical mansion where the great Byron lived, I could find no admission. In vain I pleaded with the lodge-keeper for liberty only to walk up the avenue and see the outside of the house.No, she was immovable, and finally shut the gates with an awful clang in my face.I have since learned that many Americans have been treated in the same way.The heat of July the 23rd was very great and oppressive, and a haze almost hid the beautiful scenery ’twixt Dunbar and Haddington from our view.Arrived at the latter quaint old town, however, we were soon at home, for, through the kindness of the editor of theCourier, the Wanderer found a resting-place in the beautiful haugh close by the riverside, and under the very shadow of the romantic old cathedral and church adjoining.The cathedral was rendered a ruin by the soldiery of Cromwell, and very charming it looks as I saw it to-night under the rays of the moon.The people of Haddington are genuinely and genially hospitable, and had I stayed here a month I believe I would still have been a welcome guest.It is said that the coach-builders here are the best in Scotland. At all events I must do them the credit of saying they repaired a bent axle of my caravan, and enabled me on the afternoon of the 24th to proceed on my way in comfort and safety.Not, however, before I had made a pilgrimage to the grave of poor Mrs Carlyle. The graveyard all around the church and cathedral is spacious and well-kept, but her grave is inside the ruin.It was very silent among these tall red gloomy columns; the very river itself glides silently by, and nothing is to be heard except the cooing of the pigeons high over head. The floor is the green sward, and here are many graves.It was beside Mrs Carlyle’s, however, that I sat down, and the reader may imagine what my thoughts were better than I can describe them.An old flat stone or slab covers the grave, into which has been let a piece of marble bearing the following inscription beneath other names:“Here likewise now restsJane Welsh Carlyle,Spouse of Thomas Carlyle, Chelsea, London.She was born at Haddington, 14th July, 1800,The only child of the above John Welsh,And of Grace Welsh, Caplegill,Dumfriesshire, his wife.In her bright existence sheHad more sorrows than are common, but also a softInvincibility and clearness of discernment, and a nobleLoyalty of heart which are rare. For 40 years she wasThe true and ever-loving helpmate of her husband,And by act and word unwearily forwarded him as noneElse could, in all of worthy, that he did or attempted.She died at London on the 21st April, 1866,Suddenly snatched away from him, andThe light of his life, as if gone out.”I believe the above to be a pretty correct version of this strange inscription, though the last line seems to read hard.There is a quaint old three-arched bridge spanning the river near the cathedral, and in it, if the tourist looks up on the side next the ruin, he will notice a large hook. On this hook culprits used to be hanged. They got no six-foot drop in those days, but were simply run up as sailors run up the jib-sail, the slack of the rope was belayed to something, and they were left to kick until still and quiet in death.A visit to a celebrated pigeonry was a pleasant change from the churchyard damp and the gloom of that ruined cathedral. Mr Coalston is a famous breeder of pigeons of many different breeds. The houses are very large, and are built to lean against a tall brick wall. The proprietor seemed pleased to show me his lovely favourites, and put them up in great flocks in their aviaries or flights.So successful has this gentleman been in his breeding that the walls are entirely covered with prize cards.He loves his pigeons; and here in the garden near them he has built himself an arbour and smoking-room, from the windows of which he has them all in view.We started about two pm. I would willingly have gone sooner, but the Wanderer was surrounded on the square by a crowd of the most pleasant and kindly people I ever met in my life. Of course many of these wanted to come in, so for nearly an hour I held a kind oflevée. Nor did my visitors come empty-handed; they brought bouquets of flowers and baskets of strawberries and gooseberries, to say nothing of vegetables and eggs. Even my gentle Jehu John was not forgotten, and when at length we rolled away on our road to Musselburgh, John had a bouquet in his bosom as large as the crown of his hat.God bless old Haddington, and all the kindly people in it!

“Here springs the oak, the beauty of the grove,Whose stately trunk fierce storms can scarcely move;Here grows the cedar, here the swelling vineDoes round the elm its purple clusters twine;Here painted flowers the smiling gardens bless,Both with their fragrant scent and gaudy dress;Here the white lily in full beauty grows;Here the blue violet and the blushing rose.”Blackmore.

Had a gale of wind come on to blow during our stay at Dunbar, our position on the green cliff-top would undoubtedly have been a somewhat perilous one, for the wind takes a powerful hold of the Wanderer. Perhaps it was this fact which caused my illustrious valet and factotum to write some verses parodying the nursery rhyme of “Hush-a-bye baby, upon the tree top.” I only remember the first of these:—

“Poor weary Wanderer on the cliff-top,If the wind blows the carriage will rock,If gale should come on over she’ll fallDown over the cliff, doctor and all.”

Perhaps one of the most pleasant outings I had when at Dunbar was my visit to the beautiful loch of Pressmannan.

I give here a short sketch of it to show that a gentleman gipsy’s life is not only confined to the places to which he can travel in his caravan. The Wanderer is quite a Pullman car, and cannot be turned on narrow roads, while its great height causes overhanging trees to form very serious obstacles indeed.

But I have my tricycle. I can go anywhere on her. Well, but if I want to take a companion with me on some short tour where the Wanderer cannot go, it is always easy to borrow a dogcart, pop Pea-blossom into the shafts, and scud away like the wind. This is what I did when I made up my mind to spend—

A Day at Pressmannan.

I would have preferred going alone on my cycle with a book and my fishing-rod, but Hurricane Bob unfortunately—unlike the infant Jumbo—is no cyclist, and a twenty-miles’ run on a warm summer’s day would have been too much for the noble fellow. Nor could he be left, in the caravan to be frightened out of his poor wits with thundering cannon and bursting shells. Hence Pea-blossom and a light elegant phaeton, with Bob at my feet on his rugs.

We left about ten am, just before the guns began to roar.

The day was warm and somewhat hazy, a kind of heat-mist.

Soon after rattling out of Dunbar we passed through a rural village. We bore away to the right, and now the scenery opened up and became very interesting indeed.

Away beneath us on our right—we were journeying north-west—was a broad sandy bay, on which the waves were breaking lazily in long rolling lines of foam. Far off and ahead of us the lofty and solid-looking Berwick Law could be seen, rising high over the wooded hills on the horizon with a beautiful forest land all between.

Down now through an avenue of lofty beeches and maples that makes this part of the road a sylvan tunnel. We pass the lodge-gates of Pitcox, and in there is a park of lordly deer.

On our left now are immensely large rolling fields of potatoes. These supply the southern markets, and thepomme de terreis even shipped, I believe, from this country to America. There is not a weed to be seen anywhere among the rows, all are clean and tidy and well earthed up.

No poetry about a potato field? Is that the remark you make, dear reader? You should see these even furrows of darkest green, going high up and low down among the hills; and is there any flower, I ask, much prettier than that of the potato? But there we come to the cosy many-gabled farmhouse itself. How different it is from anything one sees in Yorks or Berkshire, for instance! A modern house of no mean pretensions, built high up on a knoll, built of solid stone, with bay windows, with gardens, lawns, and terraces, and nicely-wooded winding avenues. About a mile farther on, and near to the rural hamlet of Stenton, we stop to gaze at and make conjectures about a strange-looking monument about ten feet high, that stands within a rude enclosure, where dank green nettles grow.

What is it, I wonder? I peep inside the door, but can make nothing of it. Is it the tomb of a saint? a battlefield memorial? the old village well? or the top of the steeple blown down in a gale of wind?

We strike off the main road here and drive away up a narrow lane with a charming hedgerow at each side, in which the crimson sweetbriar-roses mingle prettily with the dark-green of privet, and the lighter green of the holly.

At the top of the hill the tourist may well pause, as we did, to look at the view beneath. It is a fertile country, only you cannot help admiring the woods that adorn that wide valley—woods in patches of every size and shape, woods in rows around the cornfields, woods in squares and ovals, woods upon hills and knolls, and single trees everywhere.

On again, and ere long we catch sight of a great braeland of trees—a perfect mountain of foliage—worth the journey to come and see. That hill rises up from the other side of the loch. We now open a gate, and find ourselves in a very large green square, with farm buildings at one side and a great stone well in the centre. Far beneath, and peeping through the trees, is the beautiful mansion-like model farmhouse. It is surrounded by gardens, in which flowers of every colour expand their petals to the sunshine. No one is at home about the farmyard. The servants are all away haymaking, so we quietly unlimber, stable, and feed Pea-blossom. Hurricane Bob, my Jehu, and myself then pass down the hill through a wood of noble trees, and at once find ourselves on the margin of a splendid sheet of water that winds for miles and miles among the woodlands and hills.

I seat myself in an easy-chair near the boathouse, a chair that surely some good fairy or the genii of this beautiful wildery has placed here for me. Then I become lapt in Elysium. Ten minutes ago I could not have believed that such scenery existed so near me.

What a lonesome delightful place to spend a long summer’s day in! What a place for a picnic or for a lover’s walk! Oh! to fancy it with a broad moon shining down from the sky and reflected in the water!

The road goes through among the trees, not far from the water’s edge, winding as the lake winds. The water to-day is like a sheet of glass, only every now and then and every here and there a leaping fish makes rings in it; swallows are skimming about everywhere, and seagulls go wheeling round or settle and float on the surface. We see many a covey of wild ducks too, but no creature—not even the hares and rabbits among the brackens—appear afraid of us.

Nowhere are the trees of great height, but there is hardly one you can give a name to which you will not find here by the banks of this lovely lonesome lake, to say nothing of the gorgeous and glowing undergrowth of wild shrubs and wild flowers.

Weary at last, because hungry, we returned to the green square where we had left our carriage, and, first giving Pea-blossom water, proceeded to have our own luncheon.

We had enough for the three of us, with plenty to spare for the feathered army of fowls that surrounded us. They were daring; they were greedy; they were insolent; and stole the food from our very fingers.

Ambition in this world, however, sometimes over-reaches itself. One half-bred chick at last stole a whole polonie, which was to have formed part of Bob’s dinner. Bob knew it, and looked woefully after the thieving chick; the brave little bird was hurrying off to find a quiet place in which to make its dinner.

It had reckoned rather rashly, though.

A cochin hen met the chick. “What daring audacity!” cried the hen. “Setyouup with a whole polonie, indeed!”

A dig on the back sent the chick screaming away without the sausage, and the big hen secured it.

“I’ll go quietly away and eat it,” she said to herself, “behind the water-butt.”

But the other fowls spied her.

“Why, she’s got a whole polonie!” cried one.

“The impudence of the brazen thing!” cried another.

“A whole polonie! a whole polonie!” was now the chorus, and the chase became general. Round and round the great stone wall flew the cochin, but she was finally caught and thrashed and deprived of that polonie. But which hen was to have it? Oh! every hen, and all the four cocks wanted it.

A more amusing scene I never witnessed at a farmyard. It was like an exciting game of football on the old Rugby system, and at one time, while the game was still going on, I counted three pairs of hens and one pair of Dorking cocks engaged in deadly combat, and all about that polonie. But sly old Bob watched his chance.Hewas not going to lose his dinner if he could help it. He went round and lay flat down behind the well, and waited. Presently the battle raged in that direction, when suddenly, with one glorious spring, Bob flung himself into the midst of the conflict. The fowls scattered and fluttered and fled, and flew in all directions, and next minute the great Newfoundland, wagging his saucy tail and laughing with his eyes, was enjoying his polonie as he lay at my feet.

Returning homewards, instead of passing the Pitcox lodge-gate, we boldly enter it; I cannot help feeling that I am guilty of trespass. However, we immediately find ourselves in a great rolling park, with delightful sylvan scenery on every side, with a river—the winding Papana—meandering through the midst of the glen far down beneath and to the right.

After a drive of about a mile we descend by a winding road into this glen, and cross the river by a fine bridge. Then going on and on, we enter the archway, and presently are in front of the mansion house of Biel itself. It is a grand old place, a house of solid masonry, a house of square and octangular towers, long and low and strong.

It is the seat of a branch of the Hamilton ilk. Miss Hamilton was not then at home.

“No, the lady is not at home at present, sir,” a baker who was driving a cart informed me, “but it would have been all one, sir. Every one is welcome to look at the place and grounds, and she would have been glad to see you.”

We really had stopped at the back of the house, which is built facing the glen, but I soon found my way to the front.

I cannot describe the beauty of those terraced gardens, that one after another led down to the green glen beneath, where the river was winding as if loth to leave so sweet a place. They were ablaze with flowers, the grass in the dingle below was very green, the waters sparkled in the sunlight, and beyond the river the braeland was a rolling cloudland of green trees.

We drove out by an avenue—two miles long—bordered by young firs and cypresses.

Altogether, the estate is a kind of earthly paradise.

And think of it being constantly open to tourist or visitor!

“What a kind lady that Miss Hamilton must be, sir!” said my coachman.

“Yes, John,” I replied. “This is somewhat different from our treatment at Newstead Abbey.”

I referred to the fact that on my arrival at the gates of the park around that historical mansion where the great Byron lived, I could find no admission. In vain I pleaded with the lodge-keeper for liberty only to walk up the avenue and see the outside of the house.

No, she was immovable, and finally shut the gates with an awful clang in my face.

I have since learned that many Americans have been treated in the same way.

The heat of July the 23rd was very great and oppressive, and a haze almost hid the beautiful scenery ’twixt Dunbar and Haddington from our view.

Arrived at the latter quaint old town, however, we were soon at home, for, through the kindness of the editor of theCourier, the Wanderer found a resting-place in the beautiful haugh close by the riverside, and under the very shadow of the romantic old cathedral and church adjoining.

The cathedral was rendered a ruin by the soldiery of Cromwell, and very charming it looks as I saw it to-night under the rays of the moon.

The people of Haddington are genuinely and genially hospitable, and had I stayed here a month I believe I would still have been a welcome guest.

It is said that the coach-builders here are the best in Scotland. At all events I must do them the credit of saying they repaired a bent axle of my caravan, and enabled me on the afternoon of the 24th to proceed on my way in comfort and safety.

Not, however, before I had made a pilgrimage to the grave of poor Mrs Carlyle. The graveyard all around the church and cathedral is spacious and well-kept, but her grave is inside the ruin.

It was very silent among these tall red gloomy columns; the very river itself glides silently by, and nothing is to be heard except the cooing of the pigeons high over head. The floor is the green sward, and here are many graves.

It was beside Mrs Carlyle’s, however, that I sat down, and the reader may imagine what my thoughts were better than I can describe them.

An old flat stone or slab covers the grave, into which has been let a piece of marble bearing the following inscription beneath other names:

“Here likewise now restsJane Welsh Carlyle,Spouse of Thomas Carlyle, Chelsea, London.She was born at Haddington, 14th July, 1800,The only child of the above John Welsh,And of Grace Welsh, Caplegill,Dumfriesshire, his wife.In her bright existence sheHad more sorrows than are common, but also a softInvincibility and clearness of discernment, and a nobleLoyalty of heart which are rare. For 40 years she wasThe true and ever-loving helpmate of her husband,And by act and word unwearily forwarded him as noneElse could, in all of worthy, that he did or attempted.She died at London on the 21st April, 1866,Suddenly snatched away from him, andThe light of his life, as if gone out.”

I believe the above to be a pretty correct version of this strange inscription, though the last line seems to read hard.

There is a quaint old three-arched bridge spanning the river near the cathedral, and in it, if the tourist looks up on the side next the ruin, he will notice a large hook. On this hook culprits used to be hanged. They got no six-foot drop in those days, but were simply run up as sailors run up the jib-sail, the slack of the rope was belayed to something, and they were left to kick until still and quiet in death.

A visit to a celebrated pigeonry was a pleasant change from the churchyard damp and the gloom of that ruined cathedral. Mr Coalston is a famous breeder of pigeons of many different breeds. The houses are very large, and are built to lean against a tall brick wall. The proprietor seemed pleased to show me his lovely favourites, and put them up in great flocks in their aviaries or flights.

So successful has this gentleman been in his breeding that the walls are entirely covered with prize cards.

He loves his pigeons; and here in the garden near them he has built himself an arbour and smoking-room, from the windows of which he has them all in view.

We started about two pm. I would willingly have gone sooner, but the Wanderer was surrounded on the square by a crowd of the most pleasant and kindly people I ever met in my life. Of course many of these wanted to come in, so for nearly an hour I held a kind oflevée. Nor did my visitors come empty-handed; they brought bouquets of flowers and baskets of strawberries and gooseberries, to say nothing of vegetables and eggs. Even my gentle Jehu John was not forgotten, and when at length we rolled away on our road to Musselburgh, John had a bouquet in his bosom as large as the crown of his hat.

God bless old Haddington, and all the kindly people in it!

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