146 FIELD AND FERN. 



reached Stodrig. He might well congratulate us on 

 the punctuality with which we had done our two- 

 and-forty miles^ and promise us as our reward a 

 night with ^' The Northern Angler/^ who was in his 

 finest form, and, stirred by our host^s good songs, 

 delivered " the Gaelic sermon/^ 



It was not just the season to realize the rich pas- 

 tures and warm turm^) soils of the Vale of Tweed, but 

 we had seen them some months before, on a sunny 

 August morning. Then, as we passed the ley where 

 Howard was at work with his steam plough, and 

 farmers were following the furrows like rooks, and 

 saw for the first time " the ruined central tower'^ 

 of St. Mary's Abbey, with Floors Castle amid its 

 deep green setting in the distance, and the Tweed 

 and its latest tributary rolling along past vale and 

 cliff together, we could hardly wonder that the Duke 

 of Argyll should have confessed that, looking back 

 through the vista of a quarter of a century, he did 

 not remember one foot of the road between Edin- 

 burgh and " merry Carlisle," save that view from the 

 Bridge of Kelso. In his boyish rapture he visited 

 it five or six times that night ; and we, too, cherish 

 our glimpse of the bridge, as the stately Clydesdales 

 were filing over it from the showyardinto the town, 

 and little Hotspur was caracolling in the centre, as 

 if the memory still stirred him of the days when he 

 itretched the neck of the Eglinton crack through the 

 mud at Epsom, and sent the heart of Scotland into^ 

 its shoes. 



