When feudalism gave way to industry, the business of the moss trooper, the swashbuckler, and the cattle-thief ceased to be either romantic or useful. The same fate which, in the Japan of my experience, met the ruffians and professional gentlemen-assassins, was visited upon the Scottish borderers. These fellows could not understand just how and why they were now deemed common ruffians and vile murderers, who had before been powerful chiefs or loyal retainers. Instead of minstrels singing in praise of their exploits, the gallows, planted on a hundred hills, awaited them. The Japanese handled their problem by ordering to the common public execution grounds the cowardly assassins of foreigners, instead of allowing them, as gentlemen, to commit the ceremony of hara-kiri, within decorated areas curtained with white silk, to be followed by posthumous floral offerings laid on their tombs by admiring friends. In both Scotland and Japan, the effectual method, in the new climate of public opinion, was to deprive the thief and murderer of all glory and honor. In both lands, the police took the place of the military. The club of justice fell unerringly on the right noddle, instead of having innocent bystanders killed by the bullets of soldiers. In place of harmless peasants suffering the loss of their houses, crops, and cattle, the border malefactors, who later furnished themes for the cheap stage and the dime novel, paid in person the penalty of their misdeeds. Yet until a Scottish king sat on an English throne, the attempts to create a peaceful border region were more or less fitful and but partially successful. It is true that the area had long before been marked off into three districts, or marches,--east, middle, and west,--with officers called “wardens.” These, aided by commissioners, put down petty insurrections and punished cattle-thieves. Occasionally a warden would be slain at a border meeting, as was Sir Robert Kerr, whose murder was avenged by one of his loyal followers, who pursued the assassin as far as York, dragged him out of concealment, and brought his head to their new master. This exploit almost duplicated the approved episode of the Japanese Forty-seven Ronins in Yedo, though on a smaller scale. Further to carry out the fashion, which I used to see often illustrated in Japan, the head was exposed in Edinburgh, on the king’s cross.