had come from Edinburgh Castle.  There were a few who galloped the other way, couriers for Edinburgh, and the laird’s son, and Master Clayton, the deputy sheriff, and such like.  And among others there was one a fine built, heavy man on a roan horse, who pulled up at our gate and asked some question about the road.  He took off his hat to ease himself, and I saw that he had a kindly long-drawn face, and a great high brow that shot away up into tufts of sandy hair.

“I doubt it’s a false alarm,” said he.  “Maybe I’d ha’ done well to bide where I was; but now I’ve come so far, I’ll break my fast with the regiment.”

He clapped spurs to his horse, and away he went down the brae.

“I ken him weel,” said our student, nodding after him.  “He’s a lawyer in Edinburgh, and a braw hand at the stringin’ of verses.  Wattie Scott is his name.”

None of us had heard of it then; but it was not long before it was the best known name in Scotland, and many a time we thought of how he speered his way of us on the night of the terror.

But early in the morning we had our minds set at ease.  It was grey and cold, and my mother had gone up to the house to make a pot of tea for us, when there came a gig down the road with Dr. Horscroft of Ayton in it and his son Jim.  The collar of the doctor’s brown coat came over his ears, and he looked in a deadly black humour; for Jim, who was but fifteen years of age, had trooped off to Berwick at the first alarm with his father’s new fowling piece.  All night his dad had chased him, and now there he was, a prisoner, with the barrel of the stolen gun sticking out from behind the seat.  He looked as sulky as his father, with his hands thrust into his side-pockets, his brows drawn down, and his lower lip thrusting out.

“It’s all a lie!” shouted the doctor as he passed.  “There has been no landing, and all the fools in Scotland have been gadding about the roads for nothing.”

His son Jim snarled something up at him on this, and his father struck him a blow with his clenched fist on the side of his head, which sent the boy’s chin forward upon his breast as though he had been stunned.  My father shook his head, for he had a liking for Jim; but we all walked up to the house again, nodding and blinking, and hardly able to keep our eyes open now that we knew that all was safe, but with a thrill of joy at our hearts such as I have only matched once or twice in my lifetime.

Now all this has little enough to do with what I took my pen up to tell about; but when a man has a good memory and little skill, he cannot draw one thought from his mind without a dozen others trailing out behind it.  And yet, now that I come to think of it, this had something to do with it after all; for Jim Horscroft had so deadly a quarrel with his father, that he was packed off to the Berwick Academy, and as my father had long wished me to go there, he took advantage of this chance to send me also.