were flying from Claverhouse's dragoons, lurking in the black, oozing "peat-hags," hiding by the foaming burns, sheltering on the wild moors, amongst the heather and the wet moss. It was the landlady of this same Crook Inn who found for one fugitive a novel hiding hole; she built him safely into her stack of peats. There has been many a less comfortable and less secure hitting place than that; and where could one drier be found? It was at the Crook that William Black makes his travellers in the "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton" spend a night, and the fare to which in the evening he sets his party down was certainly of the frugalest. But when this present writer knew the inn in the 'seventies, it was far from being only on "whisky and ham and eggs" that he was obliged to subsist. It was then an ideal angler's haunt; and no more gentle lullaby can be imagined than the low murmur of Tweed, and the quiet _hus-s-s sh_ of many waters breathing down the valley on the still night air. A mile or more beyond the Crook, there is the Bield, also once an inn "From Berwick to the Bield," is the Tweedside equivalent of the Scriptural "From Dan even to Beer-sheba." It was here at the Bield that the Covenanters thought once to trap Claverhouse; but that "proud Assyrian" rode not easily into snares. On the hill above is the site of Oliver Castle, home of the Fraser family, once so powerful in this part of the Border--the site, I think, but nothing more. And now, to reach that part of Tweedsmuir which more than any other casts over one a spell, it is necessary to branch off here to the left and follow the road shown in Mr. Thomson's charming sketch. Straight ahead of you, as you stand by the little Tweedsmuir post-office, you look up the beautiful valley of the Talla, where the steep hills lie at first open and green and smiling on either hand, but gradually changing their character, close in, gloomy and scarred, and {360}frowning, as the distant Talla Linn is neared. [Illustration: 0380] But before you leave the little hamlet of Tweedsmuir--it can scarcely be called a village--by the old single-arched bridge that is thrown here across Tweed, where he roars and chafes among his rocks {361}ere plunging down into the deep, black pool below, you will see on your left a spire peering out over the tree-tops. [Illustration: 0381] That is the church of Tweedsmuir, on its strange, tumulus-like mound by the river's brink. And here you will find:n the green grass, under the clustering trees, the graves of some who fell for "The Covenant," one headstone, at least, relettered by "Old {362}Mortality" himself. This is the grave of one John Hunter; but doubless there are others, less noticeable, who rest with him in this quiet spot, far from the world's clash and turmoil, where no sound harsher than the Sabbath bell that calls to prayer or the sighing of the wind in the trees, can ever break the silence. Here is Hunter's epitaph: [Illustration: 0382]