MOODLAW TO ARKLETOX. 373 



and a straight-backed Liddesdale hare in front of 

 them. On one occasion Lord John Scott brought 

 Williamson and the hounds^ and they drew towards 

 Cannobie. Will didn^t care for such house-side hills, 

 and Lord John was always for getting him into the 

 flows. However, he knew what they were up to, 

 and escaped their wiles pretty well, and delivered 

 himself pretty smartly when he was safe back at St. 

 EoswelFs : '• Good my lud^ did ye ever ken the like 

 6' that ? — men and muirs a' alike. Pve been in the 

 flows, and they've never been in bed — they^refou yet ; 

 there^s something else than a fox in their 'ee" Lord 

 John loved this wild Langholm hunting, and spared 

 himself no fatigue. He once rode some thirty miles to 

 Langholm the day before a hunt, from Spottiswoode 

 and found at Cannobie, through the Wauchope country 

 and over Eskdale and back to Langholm, and then 

 to Thirlstane Castle, forty miles away in the heart 

 of Berwickshire. The quiet dalesman might well 

 run out to look, as he swept past like the storm, 

 catching up his hacks of yesterday at points on the 

 road. 



It was well said of him that he was a " Scotch- 

 man of the Scotch,^^ and that '' in the days of Border 

 chivalry he would have been the hero of many a 

 ballad." He leistered about the Ettrick and the 

 Tweed, and he and the Duke of Athole vied with 

 each other, in their otter-hunting bouts, who should 

 tunnel farthest into the fortress when it had gone 

 right under the bank, and who should come out from 



