disinterred at night, and the coffin placed against the Saut Ha’ door, where Rea was confronted with it next morning.  There was a sharp contest between the Church authorities and the public, and the body was once more interred in the churchyard, but only to fall on Rea when he opened his door the next morning.  The authorities were then compelled to yield to the popular clamour, and the corpse found a temporary resting-place in a remote corner of Wilton Common; but the minister ultimately triumphed, and Jenny was again buried in the churchyard, there to rest for all time in peace.

[Illustration:  WILTON OLD CHURCH.]

We had now joined the old coach road from London to Edinburgh, a stone on the bridge informing us that that city was fifty miles distant.  We turned towards London, and as we were leaving the town we asked three men, who had evidently tramped a long distance, what sort of a road it was to Langholm, our next stage.  They informed us that it was twenty-three miles to that town, that the road was a good one, but we should not be able to get a drink the whole way, for “there wasn’t a single public-house on the road.”

Presently, however, we reached a turnpike gate across our road, and as there was some fruit exhibited for sale in the window of the toll-house we went inside, and found the mistress working at her spinning-wheel, making a kind of worsted out of which she made stockings.  We bought as much fruit from her as the limited space in our bags allowed, and had a chat with her about the stocking trade, which was the staple industry of Hawick.  She told us there were about 800 people employed in that business, and that they went out on strike on the Monday previous, but with an advance in their wages had gone in again that morning.

The stockings were now made by machines, but were formerly all made by hand.  The inventor of the first machine was a young man who had fallen deeply in love with a young woman, who, like most others living thereabouts at that time, got her living by making stockings.  When he proposed to her, she would not have him, because she knew another young man she liked better.  He then told her if she would not marry him he would make a machine that would make stockings and throw her out of work and ruin them all.  But the girl decided to remain true to the young man she loved best, and was presently married to him.

[Illustration:  GOLDIELANDS TOWER.]

The disappointed lover then set to work, and, after much thought and labour, succeeded in making a stocking machine; and although it created a great stir in Hawick, where all three were well known, it did not throw any one out of work, but was so improved upon with the result that more stockings were made and sold at Hawick than ever before!

We thanked the old lady for her story, and, bidding her good-bye, went on our way.  Presently we came to the ruins of a castle standing near the road which a clergyman informed us was Goldielands Tower, mentioned with Harden by Sir Walter Scott in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel.”  He told us that a little farther on our way we should also see Branxholm, another place referred to by Scott.  Although we were on the look out for Branxholm, we passed without recognising it, as it resembled a large family mansion more than the old tower we had expected it to be.