Sure enough, when the farmer reached Lanercost there were his bullocks contentedly grazing in a field, while contemplatively gazing at them stood an elderly man, with damaged face.

Up rode the farmer on the mare.

“Here!” shouted he angrily, “what the de’il are ye doin’ wi’ my bullocks?”

“Wh-a-at?” bellowed the other with equal fury. “Your bullocks!  And be d——­d to ye!  If it comes to that, what the de’il are ye doin’ ridin’ my mare?  I’ll hae the law o’ ye for stealin’ her, ye scoondrel!  Come doon oot o’ my saiddle afore ah pu’ ye doon.”  And the two elderly men, each red in the face as a “bubbly jock,” both spluttering and almost speechless with rage, glared at each other, murder in their eyes.

Then came question and answer, and mutual explanation, and gradually the comic side of the affair struck them; each saw how the other had been done, and they burst into roar after roar of such laughter as left them weak and helpless.  They had been properly fooled.  But the fat bullocks were recovered, and the well-loved mare, even if the money paid for each was gone.  And after all, he laughs best who laughs last.  But they saw no more of Dicky of Kingswood.

STORM AND TEMPEST

When we think of “the Border,” the picture that rises to mind is usually one of hill and dale, of peat-hag and heathery knoll, of brimming burns that tumble headlong to meet the embrace of rivers hurrying to their rest in the great ocean.  One sees in imagination the solemn, round-shouldered hills standing out grim in the thin spring sunshine, their black sides slashed and lined with snow; later, one pictures these hills decked with heartsease and blue-bells a-swing in the summer breeze, or rich with the purple bloom of heather; and, again, one imagines them clothed in November mists, or white and ghost-like, shrouded in swirling clouds of snow.

But there is another part of the Border which the inland dweller is apt to forget—­that which, in sweep upon sweep of bay, or unbroken line of cliff, extends up the coasts of Northumberland and Berwickshire.  That is a part of the Border which those who are not native to it know only in the months of summer, when the sea is sapphire-blue, when surf creams softly round the feet of limpet-covered rocks, and the little wavelets laugh and sparkle as they slide over the shining sands.  It is another matter when Winter with his tempests comes roaring from the North.  Where are then the laughing waters and the smiling sunlit sands?  Swallowed up by wild seas with storm-tossed crests, that race madly landward to dash themselves in blind fury on shoreless cliffs, or sweep resistless over a shingly beach.