the Scottish chief for his friend.  Bertram’s sorrow lasted for the rest of his days; he gave away his lands and possessions to the poor, and retiring to a lovely spot on the banks of the Coquet, where rocky cliffs overhung the river, he carved out in the living stone a little cell, dormitory, and chapel, and dwelt there, passing his days in mourning, meditation, and prayer.  In the chapel, with its gracefully arched roof, he fashioned on an altar-tomb the image of a lady, and at her feet the figure of a hermit, in the attitude of grief, one hand supporting his head and the other pressed against his breast, leaning over and gazing at the lady for ever.  The poignant sentence “My tears have been my meat day and night,” is carved over the entrance to the little chapel.  Here, in this beautiful spot, almost under the shadow of the castle walls belonging to his noble friend, the sorrowing knight, now a holy hermit, spent the remainder of his life in the little dwelling he had wrought in the living rock.  It remains to-day more beautiful, if possible, than ever, overhung by a canopy of waving greenery, and draped with ferns and mosses, their graceful fronds laved by the rippling Coquet whose gentle murmurings fill the still air with music.

The next tale takes us to the neighbourhood of Belford, and out upon the old post road from London to Edinburgh.  In the unsettled times of James the Second’s reign, one Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree was condemned to death for his part in the rising which was led by the Duke of Argyle.  Powerful friends, heavily bribed by Sir John’s father, the Earl of Dundonald, were working in Sir John’s favour, and they had strong hopes of obtaining a pardon.  But meanwhile, Sir John lay in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh, and the warrant for his execution was already on its way northward, in the post-bag carried forward by horseman after horseman throughout the length of the way.  Could the arrival of the warrant only be delayed by some means, his life might be saved.  In this strait, his daughter Grizzel, a girl of eighteen, conceived the desperate idea of preventing the warrant’s reaching its destination.  Saying nothing to anyone of her intentions, she stole away from home, and rode swiftly to the Border.  Following the road for about four miles on the English side, she arrived at the house of her old nurse; and here she changed her clothes, persuading the old dame to lend her a suit belonging to her foster-brother.  Making her way southward, she went to the inn at Belford where the riders carrying the mail usually put up for the night.  Here, the same night, came the postman, and the seeming youth watched nervously, but determinedly, for an opportunity of finding out whether the fateful paper was in his bag or not.  No slightest chance presented itself, however, and an attempt to obtain the mail-bag during the night failed by reason of the fact that the man slept upon it.  One thing she did accomplish, which gave her hope that the encounter for which she