WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 



* Na, we 've nae watcher ; there 's nae need.' 



* How do you spend the money, then ? ' 



* Weel, in competeetions ; first and second prizes, 

 an' the like o' that : an' then we hae a dinner.' 



This was at Grant's House station on the main line, 

 where the little Eye comes singing out of the Lammer- 

 muirs to follow the railway southward, as related, for 

 many miles. The village, including an inn vastly 

 improved since I used to frequent it in times remote, 

 is the nearest railroad point to the more beautiful and 

 less fished upper waters of the Whiteadder. These 

 can be reached in four miles by a hilly road, and in 

 charge of the railroad crossing where it leaves the 

 village there was recently, and may be still, for aught 

 I know, a superannuated porter with a prodigious 

 turn for eloquence and anecdote — a burly, round- 

 faced hirsute being, with a tremendous far-carrying 

 voice, a passion for fishing, and a deathless grievance 

 against the company for putting him where he is, or 

 was. 



He wasn't everybody's friend. If you had shouted 

 at him to hurry up with the gates, I doubt if he would 

 ever have spoken to you again. Indeed, I don't think 

 he was popular with the hill farmers, the dog-cart 

 men — not for any official shortcomings, but for his 

 passion for conversation. It so fell out that during 

 a quite recent summer I was constantly going back 

 and forth through his barrier, and being then mainly 

 concerned with fishing, and furthermore possessed of 

 a fatal weakness for roadside ' cracks ' with originals 

 of all sorts, I was practically annexed by this one, 

 and seldom got away under ten minutes. He had 



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