glen,
    You scarce the rivulet might ken,
    So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
    So feeble trill’d the streamlet through;
    Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen,
    Through bush and briar no longer green,
    An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
    Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
    And, foaming brown with doubled speed,
    Hurries its waters to the Tweed.”

Selkirk was his nearest town, and that was seven miles from Ashestiel; and even his nearest neighbour was at Yair, a few miles off lower down the Tweed,—­Yair of which he wrote in another of the introductions to Marmion:—­

    “From Yair, which hills so closely bind
    Scarce can the Tweed his passage find,
    Though much he fret, and chafe, and toil,
    Till all his eddying currents boil.”

At Ashestiel it was one of his greatest delights to look after his relative’s woods, and to dream of planting and thinning woods of his own, a dream only too amply realized.  It was here that a new kitchen-range was sunk for some time in the ford, which was so swollen by a storm in 1805 that the horse and cart that brought it were themselves with difficulty rescued from the waters.  And it was here that Scott first entered on that active life of literary labour in close conjunction with an equally active life of rural sport, which gained him a well-justified reputation as the hardest worker and the heartiest player in the kingdom.  At Lasswade Scott’s work had been done at night; but serious headaches made him change his habit at Ashestiel, and rise steadily at five, lighting his own fire in winter.  “Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he meant to use till dinner-time, he was seated at his desk by six o’clock, all his papers arranged before him in the most accurate order, and his books of reference marshalled around him on the floor, while at least one favourite dog lay watching his eye, just beyond the line of circumvallation.  Thus, by the time the family assembled for breakfast, between nine and ten, he had done enough, in his own language, ’to break the neck of the day’s work.’  After breakfast a couple of hours more were given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as he used to say, his ‘own man.’  When the weather was bad, he would labour incessantly all the morning; but the general rule was to be out and on horseback by one o’clock at the latest; while, if any more distant excursion had been proposed overnight, he was ready to start on it by ten; his occasional rainy days of unintermitted study, forming, as he said, a fund in his favour, out of which he was entitled to draw for accommodation whenever the sun shone with special brightness.”  In his earlier days none of his horses liked to be fed except by their master.  When Brown Adam was saddled, and the stable-door opened, the horse would trot round to the leaping-on stone of his own accord, to be mounted, and was quite