A BORDER BOYHOOD 29 



staying at Tibbie Shell's famous cottage, and 

 sleeping in her box-beds, where so often the 

 Ettrick Shepherd and Christopher North have 

 lain, after copious toddy. ' 'Tis gone, 'tis gone:' 

 not in our time will any man, like the Ettrick 

 Shepherd, need a cart to carry the trout he has 

 slain in Meggat Water. ^ That stream, flowing 

 through a valley furnished with a grass-grown 

 track for a road, flows, as I said, into St. Mary's 

 Loch. There are two or three large pools at the 

 foot of the loch, in which, as a small boy hardly 

 promoted to fly, I have seen many monsters rising 

 greedily. Men got into the way of fishing these 

 pools after a flood with minnow, and thereby 

 made huge baskets, the big fish running up to 

 feed, out of the loch. But, when last I rowed past 

 Meggat foot, the delta of that historic stream was 

 simply crowded with anglers, stepping in in front 

 of each other. I asked if this mob was a political 

 ' demonstration,' but they stuck to business, as if 

 they had been on the Regent's Canal. And this, 

 remember, was twenty miles from any town ! Yet 

 there is a burn on the Border still undiscovered, 



