When next he came to full consciousness, it was in a warm bed in a comfortable room, where every evidence of luxury met his eyes.  In an armchair by the fire, with outstretched feet, sat his rescuer, his face turned towards the bed.  And presently: 

“Why did you say last night that you knew I was coming?” he asked.

And when the dreamer had told his dream: 

“It is strange,” said the other, “that last night I should have been forced, as it were, to get up and go to the old cottage by the wood.  Over and over again I woke, plagued by an unaccountable impulse to visit those ruined walls.  Struggle as I might against it, argue with myself as I would on its folly, it always returned; and at last, about midnight, it conquered me, and I arose and went.”

THE MURDER OF COLONEL STEWART OF HARTRIGGE

Since a time long prior to the Raid of the Redeswire—­when on Caterfell the rallying cry, “Jethart’s here,” fell like sweetest music on the ears of a sore-pressed little band of armed Scots, fighting for their lives, and giving back sullenly before superior English strength—­the worst enemies of Jedburgh have never been able to taunt her with apathy, or with want of strenuousness.  In the fighting of days long gone by, in questions social or political of more modern times, lack of zeal has not been one of her characteristics; nor, perhaps, in past times have her inhabitants, or those resident in the district, been conspicuous for tolerance of the religious or political convictions of neighbours who might chance not to see eye to eye with them in such matters.

The first half of the eighteenth century was a time more fully charged than most with questions which, on the Border as elsewhere, goaded men to fury.  There was, for example, the Union; there had been, prior to that, the unhappy Darien Scheme, which ruined half Scotland and raised hatred of England to white heat; there was, later, the advent of George the First and his “Hanoverian Rats,” to the final ousting of the rightful King over the water; there was the Rising of 1715, and, finally, there was the gallant attempt by Bonnie Prince Charlie to regain his father’s crown in 1745.  Thus they had, indeed, a superfluity of subjects over which men might legitimately quarrel.  And when it is remembered that gentlemen in those days universally carried swords, and as a rule possessed some knowledge of how to use them, and that the man who did not habitually drink too much at dinner was a veritable rara avis—­a poor creature, unworthy to be deemed wholly a man—­the wonder will be, not that so many, but rather that so few, fatal quarrels took place.

Whatever in other respects might be their failings—­and these were, indeed, many and grave—­Scottish inns in those days were noted for the goodness of their claret.  As a consequence of our ancient alliance and direct trade with France, that wine was not only good, but was plentiful and cheap—­cheap enough, indeed, to become almost the national drink—­and vast quantities were daily consumed; though there were not wanting those who, protesting that claret was “shilpit” and “cauld on the stomach,” called loudly for brandy, and with copious draughts of that spirit corrected the acidity of the less potent wine.