[Illustration:  “CROSS KEYS INN.”]

Mr. Elder had many tales to tell of stage-coach days; one adventure, however, seemed more prominent in his thoughts than the others.  It happened many years ago, when on one cold day the passengers had, with the solitary exception of one woman, who was sitting on the back seat of the coach, gone into the “Cross Keys Inn” for refreshments while the horses were being changed.  The fresh set of horses had been put in, and the stablemen had gone to the hotel to say all was ready, when, without a minute’s warning, the fresh horses started off at full gallop along the turnpike road towards Carlisle.  Great was the consternation at the inn, and Sandy immediately saddled a horse and rode after them at full speed.  Meantime the woman, who Mr. Sandy said must have been as brave a woman as ever lived, crawled over the luggage on the top of the coach and on to the footboard in front.  Kneeling down while holding on with one hand, she stretched the other to the horses’ backs and secured the reins, which had slipped down and were urging the horses forward.  By this time the runaway horses had nearly covered the two miles between the inn and the tollgates, which were standing open, as the mail coach was expected, whose progress nothing must delay.  Fortunately the keeper of the first gate was on the look-out, and he was horrified when he saw the horses coming at their usual great speed without Sandy the driver; he immediately closed the gate, and, with the aid of the brave woman, who had recovered the reins, the horses were brought to a dead stop at the gate, Mr. Sandy arriving a few minutes afterwards.  The last run of this coach was in 1862, about nine years before our visit, and there was rather a pathetic scene on that occasion.  We afterwards obtained from one of Mr. Elder’s ten children a cutting from an old newspaper she had carefully preserved, a copy of which is as follows: 

Mr. Elder, the Landlord of the “Cross Keys Hotel,” was the last of the Border Royal Mail Coach Drivers and was familiarly known as “Sandy,” and for ten years was known as the driver of the coach between Hawick and Carlisle.  When the railway started and gave the death-blow to his calling, he left the seat of the stage coach, and invested his savings in the cosy hostelry of the road-side type immortalised by Scott in his “Young Lochinvar.”  He told of the time when he did duty on the stage coach for Dukes, Earls, and Lords, and aided run-a-way couples to reach the “blacksmith” at Gretna Green.  He told of the days when he manipulated the ribbons from the box of the famous coach “Engineer” when he dashed along with foaming horses as if the fate of a nation depended upon his reaching his stage at a given time.  He could remember Mosspaul Inn at the zenith of its fame under the reigning sovereign Mr. Gownlock—­whose tact and management made his Hotel famous.  He had frequently to carry large sums of money from the Border banks