CLEAR WATERS 



muir hills. For every morning at six o'clock or there- 

 abouts your slumbers may be abruptly shattered by a 

 horn vigorously blown in the wide, silent street : and 

 if you look out of your window you will see twenty or 

 thirty cows hastening from back-yards and byres to 

 meet the town herd who pilots them to the hills. 

 At sunset you will see them returning, and to the 

 sound of the same civic horn scattering to their 

 respective milk-pails. For the freemen of Lauder 

 own nearly two thousand acres, half of which is pasture 

 and half excellent tillage land, which last is divided 

 among them according to ancient rites far too intricate 

 to deal with here. Lauder is only a townlet of some 

 fifteen hundred souls, but it is a great thing to be one 

 of its hereditary freemen, the privilege being appraised 

 at about five hundred pounds, to say nothing of the 

 glory. This, no doubt, keeps its patriotic folk from 

 fretting that they are not as other bustling places, like 

 Galashiels for instance, just across the hiUs, or even 

 as other market towns like Melrose, Kelso, Duns, or 

 Haddington. It tends, no doubt, to making them 

 historically minded, contented with their quiet lot, 

 and ready to crack at all times about the Earls of 

 Lauderdale still beneficently reigning over them and 

 those long departed ; or even about the long vanished 

 Lauders whose ruined peel towers still dot the dale. 

 iEsthetically it is just the place for the contemplative 

 angler, and I have made no mention of several lusty 

 burns that may be followed into the heart of the hiUs 

 by those who have a mind for such rambles, and are 

 content with small deer and an off-chance of something 

 better. You mustn't, of course, play about on Sunday 



