[Illustration:  BRANXHOLM TOWER.]

It was astonishing what a number of miles we walked in Scotland without finding anything of any value on the roads.  A gentleman told us he once found a threepenny bit on the road near a village where he happened to be staying at the inn.  When his find became known in the village, it created quite a sensation amongst the inhabitants, owing to the “siller” having fallen into the hands of a “Saxon,” and he gravely added to the information that one-half of the people went in mourning and that it was even mentioned in the kirk as the “awfu’” waste that had occurred in the parish!

[Illustration]

We were not so lucky as to find a silver coin, but had the good fortune to find something of more importance in the shape of a love-letter which some one had lost on the road, and which supplied us with food for thought and words for expression, quite cheering us up as we marched along our lonely road.  As Kate and John now belong to a past generation, we consider ourselves absolved from any breach of confidence and give a facsimile of the letter (see page 198).  The envelope was not addressed, so possibly John might have intended sending it by messenger, or Kate might have received it and lost it on the road, which would perhaps be the more likely thing to happen.  We wondered whether the meeting ever came off.

[Illustration:  COVENANTER’S GRAVE.]

Shortly after passing Branxholm, and near the point where the Allan Water joined the River Teviot, we turned to visit what we had been informed was in the time of King Charles I a hiding place for the people known as Covenanters.  These were Scottish Presbyterians, who in 1638, to resist that king’s encroachments on their religious liberty, formed a “Solemn League,” followed in 1643 by an international Solemn League and Covenant “between England and Scotland to secure both civil and religious liberty.”  These early Covenanters were subjected to great persecution, consequently their meetings were held in the most lonely places—­on the moors, in the glens, and on the wild mountain sides.  We climbed up through a wood and found the meeting-place in the ruins of a tower—­commonly said to have been built by the Romans, though we doubted it—­the remains of which consisted of an archway a few yard longs and a few yards square, surrounded by three trenches.  It occupied a very strong position, and standing upon it we could see a hill a short distance away on the top of which was a heap of stones marking the spot where a bon-fire was lit and a flag reared when Queen Victoria drove along the road below, a few years before our visit.

In former times in this part of Scotland there seemed to have been a bard, poet, or minstrel in every village, and they appeared to have been numerous enough to settle their differences, and sometimes themselves, by fighting for supremacy, for it was at Bradhaugh near here that a deadly combat took place in 1627 between William Henderson, known as “Rattling Roaring Willie,” and Robert Rule, another Border minstrel, in which, according to an old ballad, Willie slew his opponent, for—­