“‘Deed, sirs, there’s no rebels here.  An’ that’s a’ my son an’ me has to live on.”

“How do you live in this outlandish spot all the year round, then, mistress?”

“Indeed, sir,” said the woman, “the cow and the kailyaird, and whiles a pickle oat meal, wi’ God’s blessing, is a’ my mailen.  The Lord has provided for the widow and the faitherless, and He’ll aye provide.”

“We’ll soon see about that,” said the ruffian.  With his sabre, and paying no heed to the helpless woman’s lamentations or to the half-hearted remonstrances of his comrades, he killed the poor widow’s cow; then going to the little patch of garden, he tore up and threw into the burn all the stock of kail.

“There, you old rebel witch,” said he, with a heartless laugh, as the party set forward again, “you may live on God’s blessing now.”

It broke the poor toil-worn widow’s heart, and she died ere the summer was ended.  Lost to the ken of his few friends, her boy wandered sorrowfully to another part of the country, and winter storms soon left but the crumbling walls and broken roof of what had been his home.

Thirteen years, almost to a day, passed ere fate brought together again the man who committed that foul wrong and his surviving victim.  If retribution came with halting foot, it came none the less surely, for “though the mills of God grind slowly, they grind exceeding small.”

HIGHWAYMEN IN THE BORDER

It can scarcely be said that the Border, either north or south of Tweed, has ever as a field of operations been favoured by highwaymen.  Fat purses were few in those parts, and if he attempted to rob a farmer homeward bound from fair or tryst—­one who, perhaps, like Dandie Dinmont on such an occasion, temporarily carried rather more sail than he had ballast for—­a knight of the road would have been quite as likely to take a broken head as a full purse.

There has occasionally been some disposition to claim as a north country asset, Nevison, the notorious highwayman, who is said to have been the true hero of the celebrated ride to York, which, in his novel, Rookwood, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth assigns to Dick Turpin.  Nevison, however, was a north countryman only in the sense that he was born in Yorkshire, and he never did frequent any part of the north country, but confined his operations chiefly to districts adjacent to London, where he flew at higher game than in those days was generally to be found travelling Border roads.  Nor in reality was it he who took that great ride to York.  The feat was accomplished in the year 1676 by a man named Nicks, if Defoe’s account is to be relied on.  Nicks committed a robbery at Gadshill, near Chatham, at about four o’clock one summer’s morning.  Knowing that, in spite of his crape mask, his victim had recognised him, Nicks galloped to Gravesend, where, together with his mare, he crossed the Thames by boat, then