And surely, if sinners ever required absolution, some of those who must have knelt here had need to ask it. On the shoulders of de Soulis and Both well alone--among those who from time to lime held the castle of Hermitage perhaps the chief of sinners,--there rested a load of iniquity too heavy to be borne by ordinary mortal; and of the others, some perhaps did not lag far behind in cruelty and wickedness. If the tale be all true regarding the last days of Sir Alexander Ramsay in 1342, the Knight of Liddesdale had a good deal to answer for during his tenancy of the castle. The interior of the building is in so much more ruinous a state than the outside, that it is not possible to follow with any degree of accuracy incidents that took place within its walls. It is said that before death ended his pangs, Sir Alexander Ramsay eked out a miserable existence for seventeen days on grains of corn that dribbled down from a granary overhead into the dungeon where he lay. But the small dungeon where he is {384}said to have been confined has a vaulted roof, and the room above was manifestly a guard room; so that--unless there was some other dungeon--probably this story too, so far at least as the grains of corn are concerned, must go the way of other picturesque old tales. [Illustration: 0404] Some interesting relics were found among the rubbish on the floor when the dungeon was opened early in the nineteenth century, but I do not know that there was anything that could in any way be connected with Sir Alexander's fate. Many an unhappy wretch no doubt had occupied the place since his day. But what there was I believe was given to Sir Walter Scott, who also, as readers may see in Lockhart's "Life," got from Dr. Elliot of Cleuchhead "the large old Border war horn, which ye may still see hanging in the armoury at Abbotsford.... One of the doctor's servants had used it many a day as a grease-horn for his scythe, {385}before they discovered its history. When cleaned out, it was never a hair the worse--the original chain, hoop, and mouthpiece of steel, were all entire, just as you now see them. Sir Walter carried it home all the way from Liddesdale to Jedburgh, slung about his neck like Johnny Gilpin's bottle, while I [Shortreed] was intrusted with an ancient bridle-bit which we had likewise picked up." The horn I think had been found in a marshy bit of land near the castle. Since about 1594, Hermitage has been the property of the Scotts of Buccleuch, into whose hands it came through their connection with Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell. A sketch done in 1810 shows that at that date one wall of the castle was rent from top to bottom by an enormous fissure, seemingly almost beyond redemption. But about 1821, careful repairs were undertaken by order of the then Duke of Buccleuch, and, externally, the building now seems to be in excellent condition.