Hethpoole presents us with a link not only with history, but with romance as well.  An ivied ruin near at hand, with walls of enormous strength, is said to be the remains of the castle where the final tragedy in “The Hermit of Warkworth” took place.  Here, it is said, the distracted lover came upon his lady and his brother, who had at that moment effected her escape, and not recognising the youth, rushed upon the pair with drawn sword, only to discover too late his terrible mistake, and lose both brother and bride—­for the lady received a mortal wound in trying to save her rescuer.

Turning our eyes now northward across the Glen from Yeavering Bell, we are looking towards Coupland Castle, and the fact that it was built so late as the reign of James I. bears eloquent testimony to the insecurity of life and property on the Borders even at that period.  The barony either gave its name to, or took its name from, a well-known Northumbrian family, of which one of the most prominent members was that Sir John de Coupland who succeeded in capturing David of Scotland at the battle of Neville’s Cross—­not, however, before he had lost some of his teeth by a blow from the mailed fist of that doughty monarch!

Beyond Coupland Castle we look across Milfield Plain lying in the angle formed by the meeting of the Glen with the deep and sullen Till, whose slow windings can be traced as it gleams at intervals between the undulations of the lower hills through which it flows northwestward to the Tweed.  Though a brisk and sparkling stream in certain parts of its course, the general characteristics of the Till are well borne out by the lines—­

  Tweed says to Till
  “What gars ye rin sae still?”
  Till says to Tweed
  “Though ye rin wi’ speed
  And I rin slaw;
  Where ye droon ae man
  I droon twa.”

There is yet more of historical and traditional interest to note in this view from the top of Yeavering Bell, which, as I saw it last, lay warm in the glow of a September afternoon.  Nennius is our authority for stating that on Milfield Plain took place one of the great conflicts in which King Arthur

  “Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame
  The heathen hordes, and made a realm, and reigned”

And, as we gazed, the level spaces seemed peopled once more with charging knights, flashing sword and swinging battle-axe, and the intervening centuries dropped away, and Arthur’s call to battle for “our fair father Christ,” seemed curiously befitting that romantic scene.  But, as the shadows lengthened, and the streams took on a golden glow in the rays of the September sun, then slowly setting, “the tumult and the shouting of the captains” died away, and the figure of an earnest monk seemed to stand by the riverside, with prince and serf, peasant and warrior for his audience, and the cold bright waters of the Glen dripping from his hand, as he enrolled one after another into the ranks of an army mightier than the hosts of Arthur or Edwin.