NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 181 



retired into a private room, Mr. Callander and myself joined them, and 

 described the fine run we had had in the morning, with St. Paul, in 

 the pleasure of which they participated, from regard to the owner of 

 the hounds, and I was congratulated on my escape from the Till, 

 which several of the party declared to be the most dangerous river in the 

 country, from the numerous holes with which it abounds, in addition to 

 the rapidity of the current. Mr. Sitwell, they said, was saved in it as 

 by a miracle, by catching the end of the lash of a whipper-in's whip, 

 just as his strength had ceased to enable him to struggle any longer 

 against the stream. 



I have already observed that few men work harder than the Duke of 

 Buccleuch does, and here is one proof. Seeing his Grace booted and 

 spurred, and with a whip in his hand, I asked him '' how he was going 

 home ?" ** On horseback," was the reply. Now the night was neither 

 wet nor rough, but so dark that one gentleman, though perfectly sober, 

 had a miraculous escape for his life by falling, horse and all, down a 

 precipice close to the river Tweed, into which his horse went. On my 

 asking his Grace afterwards, how he got to Bow- wood, full twenty miles, 

 he answered, " Oh! very well; a neighbouring miller and myself tra- 

 velled very comfortably together." Now this circumstance would not 

 be worthy of mention here were it not for a comment upon it; and I 

 think I know enough of human nature, at all events of the nature of 

 that description of men whom the duke had this day honoured with his 

 company at a convivial meeting at Kelso — to pronounce that had his 

 Grace stepped out of his carriage and four, on his arrival, and into it at 

 his departure, it would have stripped the honour he had conferred 

 upon his countrymen of much of its value in their eyes. This sort of 

 cessio bonorum^ if I may be allowed a lawyer's phrase — this putting 



