172 THE BORDER ANGLER. 



The angler should always betake himself to such small 

 waters when he finds the larger stream yielding him 

 sport relucantly. 



Abbey St. Bathan's is a pretty little village, an 

 oasis amongst the desert Lammermoors, deriving its 

 name from an ancient conventual establishment dedi- 

 cated to St. Bothan. It is, as we have said, four miles 

 from the Grant's-House station of the North British 

 railway. Formerly Mattie Pringle's rude little hos- 

 telry there used almost to rival Ellemford, having 

 been indeed, we believe, of older date ; but when she 

 died, her daughter Maggie scarcely kept up the charac- 

 ter of the house, and finally ran off with a soldier or 

 a navvy — (how the ways of men and women are the 

 same in the lonely village amongst the hills as in the 

 seething factory- town !) — and the licence was with- 

 drawn. It is now, however, again under respectable 

 management — there is a cleanly double-bedded room 

 — and as to the licence, why, 'tis not far to Dunse. The 

 most picturesque part of the Whitadder is the stretch 

 of four miles below the Abbey. The rugged banks 

 are finely wooded, and at the Copper-mines (that 

 metal having been anciently wrought here), the water 

 labours through a rocky channel — in one part so con- 

 tracted that it may almost be stepped over, in another 

 boiling out into a " Devil's Cauldron," popularly 

 deemed unfathomable — as if the stream born of the 

 hills were making great efforts to break through the 

 iron barrier that prevented its descent into the plain 

 below. The angling in this portion of the water is 

 admirable, and in the deep eddying pools there are 

 trout of the largest dimensions. At last, winding round 



