CLEAR WATERS 



killed sixteen-pound baskets on two occasions in the 

 preceding June, and had never had so many fish of over 

 a pound in all his experience of the river as in the past 

 season. Truly these are miraculous streams ! The 

 Leader, to be sure, has some advantage over the other 

 Tweed tributaries, as none of the salmon tribe run 

 up it. 



Lauder is the most old-fashioned little town I know 

 in Scotland. With its one long, wide street it is 

 positively picturesque, an adjective one may well be 

 chary of applying to a Scottish country town. It is, 

 moreover, fast asleep, which sounds a still hardier form 

 of description in this practical and generally wide- 

 awake country. The northward-bound motors in a 

 fairly steady stream take it, as it were, in their stride 

 and leave it quite unmoved, and for their part are 

 probably quite oblivious even of the name of the 

 place they cover with their ceaseless dust. Doubtless 

 there is a speed limit through the town, but I never 

 saw a motor show any sign that such a thing existed. 

 Nor is there any practical reason why it should, as 

 there is seldom anything in the street. Till lately 

 Lauder was six miles from a railroad, and its people 

 did a flourishing livery business in driving one another 

 to the Fountainhall station across the moors. That is 

 now scotched, and the defunct industry is still fondly 

 recalled as marking a prosperous era for ever gone. 

 The railway killed it, the railway of six miles which 

 the train, cork-screwing through winding moorland 

 glens, takes forty minutes to accomplish, though this 

 includes a stoppage or two in which the guard gets 

 down to open a gate, a quite precious incident I never 



