Here lie three Hopes enclosed within,
  Death’s prisoners by Adam’s sin;
  Yet rest in hope that they shall be
  Set by the Second Adam free.

And there were probably other triplets, but when my brother suggested there were also three letter e’s in the name of Peebles, I reminded him that it was closing-time, and also bed-time, so we rested that night in an old inn such as Charles Dickens would have been delighted to patronise.

(Distance walked twenty-five miles.)

Tuesday, October 10th.

This was the day of the Great Peebles Fair, and everybody was awake early, including ourselves.  We left the “Cross Keys” hotel at six o’clock in the morning, and a very cold one it was, for there had been a sharp frost during the night.  The famous old Cross formerly stood near our inn, and the Cross Church close at hand, or rather all that remained of them after the wars.  In spite of the somewhat modern appearance of the town, which was probably the result of the business element introduced by the establishment of the woollen factories, Peebles was in reality one of the ancient royal burghs, and formerly an ecclesiastical centre of considerable importance, for in the reign of Alexander III several very old relics were said to have been found, including what was supposed to be a fragment of the true Cross, and with it the calcined bones of St. Nicholas, who suffered in the Roman persecution, A.D. 294.  On the strength of these discoveries the king ordered a magnificent church to be erected, which caused Peebles to be a Mecca for pilgrims, who came there from all parts to venerate the relics.  The building was known as the Cross Church, where a monastery was founded at the desire of James III in 1473 and attached to the church, in truly Christian spirit, one-third of its revenues being devoted to the redemption of Christian captives who remained in the hands of the Turks after the Crusades.

[Illustration:  ST. ANDREWS CHURCH, PEEBLES, A.D. 1195.]

If we had visited the town in past ages, there would not have been any fair on October 10th, since the Great Fair, called the Beltane Festival, was then held on May Day; but after the finding of the relics it was made the occasion on which to celebrate the “Finding of the Cross,” pilgrims and merchants coming from all parts to join the festivities and attend the special celebrations at the Cross Church.  On the occasion of a Beltane Fair it was the custom to light a fire on the hill, round which the young people danced and feasted on cakes made of milk and eggs.  We thought Beltane was the name of a Sun-god, but it appeared that it was a Gaelic word meaning Bel, or Beal’s-fire, and probably originated from the Baal mentioned in Holy Writ.

As our next great object of interest was Abbotsford, the last house inhabited by Sir Walter Scott, our course lay alongside the River Tweed.  We were fortunate in seeing the stream at Peebles, which stood at the entrance to one of the most beautiful stretches in the whole of its length of 103 miles, 41 of which lay in Peeblesshire.  The twenty miles along which we walked was magnificent river scenery.