“What the deuce ails you?  Confound it, the boy’s off his head again!” he cried.

“Heaven be thanked!  My wife’s hanged!” shouted Watty.

“Oh! mad as a March hare!” fussed his host, running into the house.  “Mad, sure enough.  Must send off a boy for the doctor.”

But Watty’s news was true.  The paragraph which had caught his eye as he picked up the Portsmouth paper was, in effect, the continuation and conclusion of that other announcement which he had seen at Halifax, and was indeed an account of the execution for robbery and murder of certain persons, amongst whom, as “accessory before the fact,” was the landlady of the “Goat’s Head” Tavern.

It is uncertain if Lieutenant Walter Scott ever returned to settle in the Border; but he was a cousin of Sir Walter, who gave to Captain Basil Hall, R.N., some outline of such a story as is here told.

SHEEP-STEALING IN TWEEDDALE

     “The cattle thereof shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves.” 
     (Josh. viii. 2.)

     “The men are shepherds, for their trade hath been to feed cattle.” 
     (Gen. xlvi. 32.)

In days even earlier than those of the early Israelites, to a certain class of persons the flocks and herds of a neighbour have been an irresistible temptation.  The inhabitants of few, if indeed of any, lands have been quite free from the tendency to “lift” their neighbour’s live-stock (though probably it has not been given to many, in times either ancient or modern, to emulate the record in “cattle duffing” of Australia and Western America).  In the Scottish Border in the days of our not very remote forefathers, to take toll of the Southron’s herds was esteemed almost more a virtue than a vice, and though times had changed, even so recently as a couple of centuries back it may have seemed to some no very great crime to misappropriate a neighbour’s sheep.  March dykes or boundary fences were then things unknown; the “sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill.”  What, therefore, so natural as that the flocks should in time draw together and blend; what so easy for a man, dishonestly inclined, as to alter his neighbour’s brand and ear-mark, hurry off to some distant market, and there sell a score or two of sheep to which he had no title?  The penalty on conviction, no doubt, was heavy—­at the least, in Scotland, flogging at the hands of the common hangman, or banishment to the Plantations; but more commonly death.  The fear of punishment, however, has never yet put an end to any particular form of crime, and here detection was improbable if the thief were but clever.  He might be aided, too, by a clever dog, for “some will hund their dowg whar they darna gang themsel’,” and a really clever dog may be taught almost anything short of speaking.