It seemed a long time to us before the shop door was opened, and every minute appeared more like five than one; but we were soon comfortably seated in the shop, in the midst of all sorts of good things fit to eat.  We should have liked to begin to eat them immediately, but the fire had to be lit and the kettle boiled, so we assisted with these operations while the young man cut into a fresh loaf of bread, broke open a pot of plum jam, opened a tin of biscuits, and, with the addition of a large slice of cheese and four fresh eggs, we had a really good breakfast, which we thoroughly enjoyed.  He said it was a wonder we found him there, for it was very seldom he slept at the shop.  His mother lived at a farm about a mile and a half away, where he nearly always slept; that night, however, he had been sleeping with his dog, which was to run in a race that day, and he spent the night with it lest it should be tampered with.  He called the dog downstairs, and, though we knew very little about dogs, we could see it was a very fine-looking animal.  Our friend said he would not take L50 for it, a price we thought exorbitant for any dog.  When we had finished our enormous breakfast, we assisted the shopkeeper to clear the table, and as it was now his turn, we helped him to get his own breakfast ready, waiting upon him as he had waited upon us, while we conversed chiefly about colliers and dogs and our approaching visit to Gretna Green, which, as neither of us was married, was naturally our next great object of interest.

[Illustration:  PENTON BRIDGE, CANONBIE.]

After our long walk the previous day, with very little sleep at the end of it, and the heavy breakfast we had just eaten, we felt uncommonly lazy and disinclined to walk very far that day.  So, after wishing our friend good luck at the races, we bade him good-bye, and idly retraced our steps along the colliery road until we reached the bridge where we had met the collier so early in the morning.  We had now time to admire the scenery, and regretted having passed through that beautiful part of the country during our weary tramp in the dark, and that we had missed so much of it, including the Border Towers on the River Esk.

Riddel Water, with its fine scenery, was on our left as we came from the colliery, where it formed the boundary between Scotland and England, emptying itself into the River Esk about two miles from Canonbie Bridge, which we now crossed, and soon arrived at the “Cross Keys Inn,” of which we had heard but failed to reach the previous night.  The landlord of the inn, who was standing at the door, was formerly the driver of the Royal Mail Stagecoach “Engineer” which ran daily between Hawick and Carlisle on the Edinburgh to London main road.  A good-looking and healthy man of over fifty years of age, his real name was Elder, but he was popularly known as Mr. Sandy or Sandy Elder.  The coach, the last stage-coach that ever ran on that road, was drawn in ordinary weather by three horses, which were changed every seven or eight miles, the “Cross Keys” at Canonbie being one of the stopping-places.