“Good God!” he cried hoarsely, and pushed her from him; and the horror in his eyes smote her as his bitterest words could not have done.

Alone once more in the room, she lay face downwards on the floor, and the echo of his footfall on the stair beat into her brain like the stroke of doom.  Alone till the end of her days she lived a friendless, wretched woman, eating out her heart with the canker of “the might have been.”

THE GHOST OF PERCIVAL REED

When we look back on the past history of the Border, we might almost think that St. Andrew and St. George, who are supposed to keep watch and ward over North and South Britain, had overlooked that hilly stretch of country that lies between the Solway and the Tyne, leaving the heathen god Mars to work his turbulent will with it.  From the days of the Roman Wall it was always a tourney-ground, and in the long years when English and Scots warred against each other, scarcely one day in any year went past without the spilling of blood on one or other of its hills or moors.  Not only did the Borderers fight against those of other nations.  Constantly they fought amongst themselves.  A quick-tempered, revengeful lot were the men of those Border clans.  On the Northumberland side the quarrels were as frequent as they were amongst those hot-headed Scots—­Kers and Scotts, Elliots and Turnbulls and Croziers.

In the sixteenth century one of the most powerful of the clans in the wild Northumbrian country was that of the Reeds of Redesdale.  Even now it is a lonely part of the south land, that silent valley down which, from its source up amongst the Cheviots, the Rede flows eastward.  Bog and heather and bracken still occupy the ground to right and to left of it, and there are few sounds besides the bleat of sheep or the cries of wild birds to break the silence of the hills and moors.  But when the Reeds held power the hills often echoed to the lowing of driven cattle, to the hoof-beat of galloping horses, and to the sounds of a fight being fought to the death.  A foray into England brought many a sturdy Scottish reiver riding over the Carter Bar; and Reeds, and Halls, and Ridleys were never averse from a night ride across the English Border when a Michaelmas moon smiled on the enterprise.  The Reeds were a strong clan, but in power and in reputation they took only a second place, for the family of the Halls was stronger still.  The head of the Hall clan lived at Girsonfield, a little to the north of Otterburn, a farmhouse which had belonged to the proprietors of Otterburn Castle since the time of Queen Elizabeth.  Only a few stones of it now remain, and the new house stands on a much more exposed situation; but when Hall was its occupant, Girsonfield stood on a plot of rich green sward on the east side of the Otter.