a splendid starlight, frosty night, but, as we were very tired and hungry, we could only proceed slowly—­in fact scarcely quickly enough to maintain our circulation.  Being also very sleepy, we had to do something desperate to keep ourselves awake, so we amused ourselves by knocking with our heavy oaken sticks at the doors or window-shutters of the houses we passed on our way.  It was a mild revenge we took for the town’s inhospitality, and we pictured to ourselves how the story of two highwaymen being about the roads during the midnight hours would be circulated along the countryside during the following day, but we could not get any one to come beyond the keyhole of the door or the panes of the shuttered windows.  We were, however, becoming quite desperate, as we were now nearly famished, and, when we came to a small shop, the sounds from our sticks on the door quickly aroused the mistress, who asked us what we wanted.  My brother entered into his usual explanation that we were pedestrian tourists on a walking expedition, and offered her a substantial sum for some bread or something to eat; but it was of no use, as the only answer we got was, “I ha’ not a bit till th’ baker coomes ith’ morn’.”

This reply, and the tone of voice in which it was spoken, for the woman “snaffled,” was too much for us, and, tired as we were, we both roared with laughter; absurd though it may seem, it was astonishing how this little incident cheered us on our way.

It was a lovely country through which we were travelling, and our road, as well as the river alongside, was in many places overhung by the foliage of the fine trees, through which the brilliant lustre of the stars appeared overhead; in fact we heard afterwards that this length of road was said to include the finest landscapes along the whole of the stage-coach road between London and Edinburgh.  The bridge by which we recrossed the river had been partially built with stones from the ruins of Gilnockie Tower, once the stronghold of the famous freebooter Johnnie Armstrong, of whom we had heard higher up the country.

[Illustration:  COCKBURN’S GRAVE.]

Sir Walter Scott tells us that King James V resolved to take very serious measures against the Border Warriors, and under pretence of coming to hunt the deer in those desolate regions he assembled an army, and suddenly appeared at the Castle of Piers Cockburn of Henderland, near where we had been further north.  He ordered that baron to be seized and executed in spite of the fact that he was preparing a great feast of welcome.  Adam Scott of Tushielaw, known as the King of the Border, met with the same fate, but an event of greater importance was the fate of John Armstrong.  This free-booting chief had risen to such consequence, that the whole neighbouring district of England paid him “black-mail,” a sort of regular tribute in consideration of which he forbore to plunder them.  He had a high idea of his own importance, and seems to have been unconscious