and although these were the days of footpads and highwaymen, and coaches were “held up” in other parts, Sandy’s Coach was never molested, although he had been blocked with his four-in-hand in the snow.  He gave a graphic description of the running of the last mail coach from Hawick to Merrie Carlisle in 1862.  Willie Crozier the noted driver was mounted on the box, and the horses were all decked out for the occasion.  Jemmie Ferguson the old strapper, whose occupation like that of Othello’s was all gone, saw it start with a heavy heart, and crowds turned out to bid it good-bye.  When the valleys rang with the cheery notes of the well-blown horn, and the rumbling sound of the wheels and the clattering hoofs of the horses echoed along the way, rich and poor everywhere came to view the end of a system which had so long kept them in touch with civilisation.  The “Engineer” guards and drivers with scarlet coats, white hats, and overflowing boots, and all the coaching paraphernalia so minutely described by Dickens, then passed away, and the solitary remnant of these good old times was “Sandy” Elder the old Landlord of the “Cross Keys” on Canonbie Lea.

Soon after leaving the “Cross Keys” we came to a wood where we saw a “Warning to Trespassers” headed “Dangerous,” followed by the words “Beware of fox-traps and spears in these plantations.”  This, we supposed, was intended for the colliers, for in some districts they were noted as expert poachers.  Soon afterwards we reached what was called the Scotch Dyke, the name given to a mound of earth, or “dyke,” as it was called locally, some four miles long and erected in the year 1552 between the rivers Esk and Sark to mark the boundary between England and Scotland.  We expected to find a range of hills or some substantial monument or noble ruin to mark the boundary between the two countries, and were rather disappointed to find only an ordinary dry dyke and a plantation, while a solitary milestone informed us that it was eighty-one and a half miles to Edinburgh.  We were now between the two tollbars, one in Scotland and the other in England, with a space of only about fifty yards between them, and as we crossed the centre we gave three tremendous cheers which brought out the whole population of the two tollhouses to see what was the matter.  We felt very silly, and wondered why we had done so, since we had spent five weeks in Scotland and had nothing but praise both for the inhabitants and the scenery.  It was exactly 9.50 a.m. when we crossed the boundary, and my brother on reflection recovered his self-respect and said he was sure we could have got absolution from Sir Walter Scott for making all that noise, for had he not written: 

  Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
  Who never to himself hath said,
    This is my own, my native land! 
  Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
  As home his footsteps he hath turn’d.

[Illustration:  NETHERBY HALL.]