If we cross the bridge here and follow the pretty wandering water through a level haugh, and then turn off to the right, we arrive at a deep thickly wooded dene, and from the crest above this excellent hiding place of raided cattle looks down the old low house of Harden, (the Stammschloss of Sir Walter Scott,) now the property of Lord Polwarth, the head of this branch of the Scotts of Buccleuch. The house is more modern than the many square keeps erected in the old days of English invasions and family feuds. The Borthwick Water turns to the left, and descends from the heights of Howpasley, whence the English raiders rode down, "laigh down in Borthwick Water," in the ballad of _Jamie Telfer_. A mile or a little more above Goldielands Tower, on the left side of Teviot is Branksome Tower, the residence of the Lady of Branksome in _The Lay of the Last Minstrel._ {193}At Branksome Tower we are in the precise centre of the Scottish Border of history and romance, the centre of Scott's country. [Illustration: 0213] Yet, looking at Mr. Thompson's excellent sketch, you would scarce guess it. The house stands very near the Teviot, but still nearer the public road. Thanks to the attentions of the English at various periods, especially when the bold {194}Buccleuch stood for the fairest of ladies, Mary Queen of Scots, against preachers, presbyters, puritans, and their southern allies, perhaps no visible part of the echlice older than 1570 remains except the tower. [Illustration: 0214] The Lady of Branksome who finished the actual house after the old stronghold had been burned, appears to have thought that square keeps and barmkyns were obsolete in war, owing to the increasing merits of artillery; and she did not build a house of defence. Manifestly "nine and twenty Knights of fame" never "hung their shields in" _this_ "Branksome Hall," and never were here attended by "nine and twenty Squires of name," and "nine and twenty yeomen tall." {195}There is no room for them, and at Branlcsome, probably, there never was. It is not to be credited that, at any period, ten of the knights went to bed "sheathed in steel," to be ready for the English, or "Carved at the meal, with gloves of steel, And drank the red wine through the helmet barred." * The minstrel gave free play to his fancy. The Laird of Branksome, though Warden of the Marches, never had, never needed, so vast a retinue, and was so far from "Warkworth or Naworth, or merry Carlisle" that no Scrope, or Howard, or Percy, could fall on him at unawares. * The conjectural reading of Srhlopping, "Carved at the veal" though ingenious (for, as he observes, "the ancient Scots did not carve oat-meal") has no manuscript authority.