A BORDER BOYHOOD 35 



Perhaps a silver sedge in a warm twilight may 

 somewhat avail, but the adventure is rarely- 

 achieved. 



These are the waters with which our boyhood 

 was mainly engaged ; it is a pleasure to name and 

 number them. Memory, that has lost so much 

 and would gladly lose so much more, brings vividly 

 back the golden- sunjmer evenings by Tweedside, 

 when the trout began to plash in the stillness — 

 bfings back the long, lounging, solitary days be- 

 neath the woods of Ashiesteil — days so lonely that 

 they sometimes, in the end, begat a superstitious 

 eeriness. One seemed forsaken in an enchanted 

 world ; one might see the two white fairy deer flit 

 by, bringing to us, as to Thomas Rhymer, the tidings 

 that we must back to P'airyland. Other waters we 

 knew well, and loved : the little salmon-stream in 

 the west that doubles through the loch, and runs 

 a mile or twain beneath its alders, past its old 

 Celtic battle-field, beneath the ruined shell of its 

 feudal tower, to the sea. Many a happy day we 

 had there, on loch or stream, with the big sea-trout 

 which have somehow changed their tastes, and to- 



