From the head of Ettrick by Ettrick Kirk over to Yarrow is but little more than a step across the hills, either by the bridle track by Scabcleuch and Penistone Knowe over to the Riskinhope Burn and the head of the Loch of the Lowes, for those afoot; or by the road up Tushielaw Burn, for those on whom time, or years, press unduly, and who prefer to drive. It is not a very good road, but it serves, though the descent to St. Mary's is something of the abruptest,--one in ten, I think. If the bridle track has been followed, as one comes down towards Riskinhope, there, on the opposite side of the valley, is Chapelhope, for ever associated with Hogg's "Brownie of Bodesbeck." And at Riskinhope itself, Renwick, last of the Scottish Covenanting Martyrs, preached no long time before his execution at the Grassmarket in Edinburgh in February, 1688. "When he prayed that day, few of his hearers' cheeks were dry," says the Ettrick Shepherd. [Illustration: 0313] It was here "Where Renwick told of one great sacrifice, For he himself had borne in full his cross, And hearts sublimed were round him in the wild, And faces, God-ward turned in fervent prayer, For deeply smitten, suffering flock of Christ; And clear uprose the plaintive moorland psalm, Heard high above the plover's wailing cry, From simple hearts in whom the spirit strong Of hills was consecrate by heavenly grace, And firmly nerv'd to meet, whene'er it came, In His own time, the call to martyrdom." "The plover's wailing cry."--It is curious to note how even to this day the peewit, or plover, is hated in the Border hills, because its incessant complaining wail when disturbed so often betrayed to the dragoons the presence of lurking Covenanters, or the whereabouts of some Conventicle of the persecuted people. The shepherd or the peasant of to-day will stamp on the eggs of the peewit wherever he comes on them, muttering to himself curses on the bird as it wheels and plunges overhead, wailing dolefully.