William Little, a handsome fellow of six feet, clean built and athletic, required but little explanation.  In two minutes his pair was unyoked and tied to the beam of the plough, his coat off and cast at the back of the dyke, and as sturdy a pair of legs as any in Liddesdale had joined in the chase.  The robber had not failed to hear the laird’s shouts, and as Little unyoked his horses, he ran on, adding still more to the distance that already separated him from his pursuers.  Clearly his best chance was to leave the high-road and get on to ground where it was impossible, or, at least, most unlikely, that a mounted man could follow him.  Through hedges he clambered, vaulted dry stone dykes, leapt ditches, made somewhat heavy weather over the plough, but got away on rough turf up the hillside.  The morning wore on, and both hunters and hunted wished that the sun had shone less warmly on that March day.  On a steep part of High Tofts Hill, however, the chase at last came to an end.  The steep face of the hill was more than the laird’s good steed could manage, though nobly, in response to his call, did it do its best.  He had to turn back and come round by a part where the ascent was less steep, while Little, hot but undaunted, went on with the chase alone.  The robber’s extra weight was telling on him, and he was not in the hard training of the young Border farmer.  The hill pumped him, he stumbled as he ran, and, as Little gained on him yard by yard, he saw that he could run no longer, but must come to bay.  He turned round and faced his pursuer, breathing hard, and with all his might tugging at a big butcher’s knife in his pocket.  Ordinarily the knife came easily to his hand, but he had forgotten that the pocket was stuffed with articles stolen from the old pedlar.  The knife was hopelessly jammed, and Little was almost upon him.  A large, sharp-pointed stone stuck out of the ground at his feet. “Keep off!” he yelled to the ploughman.  “Hands off! or I’ll scatter your brains!” And as he threatened, he stooped to seize the stone and make good his threat.  But the Fates that day had signed the Irish villain’s death-warrant.  The good Border earth clung to the stone, refusing to let it go.  With all his force he tugged and tugged, but ere the earth could give way, Little had thrown himself upon him, and when Mr. Scott appeared over the brow of the hill, the sturdy farmer was still holding his own with a kicking, biting, struggling, cursing ruffian who would have had no compunction in adding another to his list of victims that day.  Between them, Little and the laird tied their captive’s hands behind his back with part of the bridle reins, and walked him back to Kirkton.  There help was sent to the old Highlander, but no doctor could undo the ill that had been wrought him, and he died a few days later.  In one of the Kirkton farm-carts the old man’s murderer was conveyed to Hawick, and from thence to Jedburgh jail.  It was too much a case of “hot trod” for him to do anything but plead guilty, and he hung on a gallows at Jedburgh, as many a worthier man had done in earlier days.  The laird lived for more than twenty years after his man hunt on that March day in 1813, and his worthy fellow-huntsman had no cause to forget his morning’s work, for he was presented with a baton and relieved from paying taxes for the rest of his natural life.