HAWICK TO ST. BOSWELL's. 215 



stone-ten. Eildon^s Hills tower behind his home; 

 but he did not speculate with us on 



" The words wliicli cleft Eildon's Mils in twain, 

 And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone :" 



and that ^^ triple height^' only brought out the story 

 of how wonderfully a first-whip's mare crossed them 

 one day, and how she surprised them all by throwing 

 tmns at night. Will's mind has always been of 

 an essentially practical rather than a poetic turn. 

 He has never visited Abbotsford or Melrose Abbey, 

 hut he has once or twice run his fox up and down the 

 Tweed banks, and into the ivied ruins of Dry- 

 burgh. With Sir Walter he communed very little, 

 except in the pages of " Old Mortality," and had 

 merely a passing word when the baronet came out on 

 the road to see the hounds passing to cover. Scraps 

 from the lonely tombstones of the Covenanters in 

 the covers about Dreghorn and Woodhouselees on the 

 Pentland Hills have been his favourite out-a-doors 

 reading; and at home, a Delme Radcliffe and Beck- 

 ford,'^ " with the Latin interlined," serve as his 

 hunting classics. 



He was not born, but " bred up from a month old" 

 at Pencaithland, six miles from Haddington. His 

 father was groom to Colonel Hamilton, and his only 

 brother, a major-general in the Bengal army, died 

 five or six years since. The Colonel and Mr. Baird, 

 grandfather to the present Sir David Baird, had a 

 joint pack, and hunted East Lothian. They were 

 both good^men with hounds ; and when Mr. Baird 



