What would have become of ourselves if we had attempted to cross the treacherous stream in the dark of the previous night we did not know, but we were sure we should have risked our lives had we made the attempt.

We were only able to explore the churchyard at Lilliesleaf, as the church was not open at that early hour in the morning.  We copied a curious inscription from one of the old stones there: 

  Near this stone we lifeless lie
  No more the things of earth to spy,
  But we shall leave this dusty bed
  When Christ appears to judge the dead. 
  For He shall come in glory great
  And in the air shall have His seat
  And call all men before His throne. 
  Rewarding all as they have done.

We were served with a prodigious breakfast at the inn to match, as we supposed, the big appetites prevailing in the North, and then we resumed our walk towards Hawick, meeting on our way the children coming to the school at Lilliesleaf, some indeed quite a long way from their destination.  In about four miles we reached Hassendean and the River Teviot, for we were now in Teviot Dale, along which we were to walk, following the river nearly to its source in the hills above.  The old kirk of Hassendean had been dismantled in 1693, but its burial-ground continued to be used until 1795, when an ice-flood swept away all vestiges both of the old kirk and the churchyard.  It was of this disaster that Leyden, the poet and orientalist, who was born in 1775 at the pretty village of Denholm close by, wrote the following lines: 

  By fancy wrapt, where tombs are crusted grey,
  I seem by moon-illumined graves to stray,
  Where now a mouldering pile is faintly seen—­
  The old deserted church of Hassendean,
  Where slept my fathers in their natal clay
  Till Teviot waters rolled their bones away.

[Illustration:  LEYDEN’S COTTAGE.]

Leyden was a great friend of Sir Walter Scott, whom he helped to gather materials for his “Border Minstrelsie,” and was referred to in his novel of St. Ronan’s Well as “a lamp too early quenched.”  In 1811 he went to India with Lord Minto, who was at that time Governor-General, as his interpreter, for Leyden was a great linguist.  He died of fever caused by looking through some old infected manuscripts at Batavia on the coast of Java.  Sir Walter had written a long letter to him which was returned owing to his death.  He also referred to him in his Lord of the Isles: 

  His bright and brief career is o’er,
    And mute his tuneful strains;
  Quench’d is his lamp of varied lore,
  That loved the light of song to pour;
  A distant and a deadly shore
    Has Leyden’s cold remains.

The Minto estate adjoined Hassenden, and the country around it was very beautiful, embracing the Minto Hills or Crags, Minto House, and a castle rejoicing, as we thought, in the queer name of “Fatlips.”