The jetty where the boats used to unload is now in a ruinous condition. The sea has broken through it, so at high tide the far end is a grass-grown island where visitors have been cut off from escape by the {217} water. I looked for the Packet Hotel where the fragment of an altar, inscribed "MATRIBVS SVIS," is built in over the door, and I found it was no longer an Inn, but a farm-house, the last house in the long street, just where the coast-line begins to bend round towards Bowness. I had seen no trace of the Wall since passing Kirkland, but I knew I ought to be able to pick it up here, so I walked round behind the ex-hotel, and began to look about. A girl was sitting sewing in the doorway of a cottage, and I asked if she could help me. "Oh yes," she said; "I'll fetch my father." An old man appeared, with a pot of green paint in one hand and a paint-brush in the other. "You have come to the right man," said he. Then, with a dramatic wave of the paint-brush, "The Roman Wall passed by this very doorstep." He gave me full instructions as to how to find it farther on: "Follow along the road to Bo'ness till you come to a gooter across the road, then turn to the left up a grassing-field, and go on till you come to an elbow. Turn to the right, and you come to a high lift; over that lift you'll find the Wall." I obeyed these instructions as closely as I could, but I made the mistake of following a closed gutter instead of an open one, and this involved me in several unexpected difficulties. I reached the {218} Wall-line sooner than my guide had intended, and the farmers about here seem to tax their ingenuity to make it as difficult as possible to follow that line. I crept under barbed wire into a "grassing" field and safely reached the hedge. Here were undoubted signs of Wall-core. I followed it to the hedge of the next field, and there I stopped. The hedge seemed quite impregnable, and there was no gate; all the hedges were of the thickest, and even if I could have made a hole, it would have been contrary to my code. I turned back to see if I could find an opening into the field on my left. A large ash-tree grew in the hedge, and without much trouble I climbed into its lower boughs, and could then make a drop of 6 feet into the next field. But again I was done! There was a gate on the west, it is true, but it was locked, and so thickly interlaced with thorn-bushes that I could not climb it. There was nothing for it but to reclimb my ash-tree, and have another look at my first hedge. I now saw that the end of a long ladder was laid flat on the top of this hedge, and rested on a gate-post in the field of my desire. Great masses of thorn-bush were heaped up under the ladder, which had evidently been thrown across as an additional barrier. Here was an opportunity to turn an enemy into a friend! I pulled myself up on to the ladder, walked from rung to rung over the thorn-bushes, and jumped off at the