Many a warrior, no doubt, lies buried in the graveyard of Hermitage chapel, but I do not think any tombstones of very-great age have ever been found. Outside, however, between the wall of the burial ground and the river, there is an interest ing mound, the reputed grave of the famous Cout o' Keilder. Keilder is a district of Northumberland adjoining Peel Fell, and in the day of the wizard Soulis, that iniquitous lord's most noted adversary was the chief of Keilder, locally called, from his great size and strength and activity, "the Cout." In his last desperate fight with Soulis and his followers on the banks of Hermitage Water, the Cout was hewing a bloody path through the press of men, towards his chief enemy, when weight of numbers forced him, like a wounded stag, to take to the water. Here, at bay in the rushing stream, guarding himself from the foes who swarmed on either bank, the Cout stumbled and fell, and, hampered by his armour, he could not regain his feet; for each time that the drowning man got his head above water, Soulis and his band thrust him back with their long spears. Finally, as he became more exhausted, they held him down. And so the Cout perished. Here on the grassy bank, hard by what is still called "The Cout o' Keilder's pool," is his grave. [Illustration: 0406] But one is disappointed to learn that when an examination of it was made some years ago, no gigantic bones were unearthed, nor indeed any bones at all. There is in some of the hills near Hermitage a peculiarity which cannot fail to strike observers; and that is, the deep gashes--you cannot call them glens--that have been cut here and there by the small burns. Scored wide and deep into the smooth sides of the hills, they are yet not so wide as to force themselves on the eye. It would be possible to drive into them, and there effectually to conceal for a time, large mobs of cattle, and I do not doubt that in old days these fissures were often so used when a hostile English force was moving up the valley. As one goes down Hermitage Water towards its junction with the Liddel, the country, one finds, is plentifully sprinkled {387}with the ruins of peel towers,--abandoned rookeries of the Elliot clan, I suppose, for the Armstrong holdings were a little lower down. But in old days, when the de Soulis's held all Liddesdale, there were other strong castles besides Hermitage. Near Dinlabyre there stood the castle of Clintwood, and not far from the meeting of the two streams, on the high bank of Liddel, stood one of their strongholds--Liddel Castle. It was from this castle that the old village of Castleton look its name: the village was at first merely a settlement of de Soulis's followers.