360 FIELD AND FERN. 



then sell them at the House of Muir and elsewhere 

 in February. 



Moffat fair, at which about one thousand rams, 

 three-fourths of them Cheviot and the rest Leicester 

 and blackfaces, are annually sold, clashed with the 

 Kelso ram sale ; but " Moodlaw's" sale came off on 

 the day before it. For a long time this sale and 

 ^'^KirkhilFs" have been on alternate years. The old 

 inn hard by the bridge which spans the Evan Water 

 looked quite bright that day, Avith tables spread 

 in the coach-houses, and union-jacks floating 

 from the hay-loft. "Ericstane" was in the chair; 

 and as visitors dropped in, table after table was 

 added, till at last the coach-house " threw out skir- 

 mishers" with knife and fork, half-way across the 

 yard. There was no music save the drone of a bag- 

 pipe in the distance, and no blackface on the field 

 save a negro who sold sweetmeats, and treated 

 each Cheviot breeding sahib to a most reverent 

 salaam. Fully a hundred shepherd- dogs lay about 

 or under the platforms, and amid the plaided crowd 

 there walked an Edinburgh horse-dealer with his 

 hands in his pockets, and trying hard to appreciate 

 that cock of the lug and glint of the eye for which 

 the Moodlaw flock is so famed. All the tups had 

 been collected two or three days before at Mr. Bry- 

 don's farm, Kinnel Head, and therefore most of the 

 breeders knew them by heart. " Skelf Hill" and the 

 sheep men from the Hawick side mustered strong ; 

 and while the young Brydons, in the absence of their 



