the absence of her husband.  The young man was loth to let so much English booty be carried off under his very eyes, so he fell upon the rearguard, and succeeded in bringing a number of packhorses to the castle.  On this the whole Scottish array turned back, and a siege of the castle began; but the Countess spiritedly held out, and Edward meanwhile drew nearer.  Some of the Scotsmen were captured, and from them the Countess’s nephew heard that Edward had reached Alnwick.  He stole out of the castle before dawning in heavy rain, to let the King know where his help was urgently needed; and by noon of the same day Edward was at Wark, only to find his quarry flown, the Scots having retreated a few hours earlier.  The King was joyfully received and thanked by the grateful Countess; and he in his turn was much struck by the beauty and grace of the high-spirited lady, and showed his admiration plainly.  In the evening, according to tradition, a ball was held, at which the incident occurred, so often related, of the accidental losing of her garter by the fair chatelaine, and the restoration of it by the King, with the remark, as a rebuke to the smiling bystanders,—­“Honi soit qui mal y pense.” This he afterwards adopted as the motto of the Order he established in honour of the beautiful Countess.

The Garter is the most exclusive of Orders, and consists of the reigning Sovereign and twenty-five Companions, of whom the Prince of Wales is always one; and it takes precedence of all other titles, ranking next to royalty.  It is a matter of great pride to all Northumbrians that perhaps the only instance of its having been bestowed on any except a peer of the realm or a foreign Sovereign, has occurred recently in the bestowal of the coveted decoration on Sir Edward Grey, a member of the ancient and important Northumbrian house of that name.

Every King of England from Henry I. to Henry IV., seems to have been at Wark at some time during his reign, with the exception of Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Richard II.  After the Union of the Crowns, Wark, like most other fortresses in the north that were not in use as the dwellings of their owners, was allowed to fall into decay.  From Wark to Carham is a walk of only two miles along the road which follows the course of the river, and ultimately leads to Kelso.  Carham has the remains of an ancient monastery; and here the Danes, after having plundered Lindisfarne, fought a battle in which the Saxons, led by several Bishops, were defeated with great slaughter.  From Carham, having reached the last point of interest on the Tweed within the Northumbrian border, we must retrace our steps to Tillmouth, and follow the Tweed through pasture land and level haughs, until we come in sight of the steep cliffs and overhanging woods by Norham Castle.

Naturally here, the words of the opening canto of “Marmion” are recalled to our memory—­

  “Day set on Norham’s castled steep,
  On Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep,
  And Cheviot’s mountains lone
  The battled towers, the donjon keep,
  The loophole grates, where captives weep,
  The flanking walls that round it sweep,
      In yellow lustre shone.”