NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 79 



the window through a telescope, which would make me see every object 

 double. '' It must be a treat," said I to myself, '' to see two beautiful 

 lakes, with their finely timbered banks, adjoining each other;" so putting 

 the instrument to my eye, I gravely looked out for dame Nature's twins. 

 Now, although I could see nothing, I could hear something that soon 

 convinced me I was *' sold." It was, in fact, not a telescope, but a 

 silver tube resembling a telescope, for the purpose of conveying brandy 

 to the moors, and, no doubt, if applied to the mouth in lieu of the eye, 

 would soon make one see every thing double. 



" But if one power did not both hear and see, 

 Our sights and sounds would always double be." 



Monday 17th. Lord Elcho met this day at Elmford-bank, in a very 

 wild country, and one apparently short of foxes. We had however 

 rather a good thing in the evening of seven or eight miles an end, from 

 Cockburn-law to Dunse-vvood, where, landing amongst a host of foxes, 

 nothing more could be done. In the course of the ring our fox skirted 

 Dunse-law, where once upon a time twenty thousand men were in arms 

 for the purpose of murdering twenty thousand other men in arms, unless 

 they said their prayers after the same form that they themselves said 

 them ! No doubt they called this '' religion," but I call it by a very 

 opposite name. 



Tuesday 18th. This was a day big with great events. Imprimis — it 

 was the one that was to usher me for the first time in my life not only 

 into the field with the Duke of Buccleuch's hounds, but, what I thought 

 still more of at the moment, into the presence of their crack huntsman 

 and " king of servants," as Lord Kintore calls him — the noted William 

 Williamson — alias Will, alias the Laird of St. Boswell's; of whom I had 



