mouth said: '_Dic peccatricis, dic peccatricis_'; whereupon both of them came out of the house fully satisfied, took horse immediately, and returned to my father's house at Thirlestane Castle, in Lauderdale, where they related this passage. This I do exactly remember. Many more particulars {046}might be got in that part of the country; but this Latin criticism, in a most illiterate ignorant woman, where there was no pretence to dispossessing, is enough, I think." It was, of course, an infallible sign of demoniac possession that the victim, mostly an illiterate person, should break out into Latin or Greek, Hebrew or what not. That was how the devil usually betrayed himself; he could by no means control his weakness for talking--generally very badly--in foreign tongues. [Illustration: 0066] The wonders of Duns in the seventeenth century by no means ceased, however, with this demon-possessed Margaret Lumsden. In 1639, when Leslie camped on Duns Law with the Covenanting army and its superfluity of ministers, there occurred a remarkable land-slide which the excited imaginations of those witnessing its effects could not fail to interpret as an assured sign that Providence meant to fight on their side. A bank on the slope of the hill near to the camp slid down,--it had probably become water-logged as the result of heavy rain.--disclosing "innumerable stones, round, for the most part, in shape, and perfectly spherical,... like ball of all sizes, from a pistol to fixed pieces, such as sakers or robenets, or battering pieces upwards." Men looked on them with awe, and bore {047}about with them specimens in their pockets, gravely showing them to excited throngs. "Nor wanted there a few who interpreted this stone magazine at Duns Hill as a miracle, as if God had sent this by ane hid providence for the use of the Covenanters." [Illustration: 0067] We return now to Tweed, where on a steep slope stand the mighty ruins of Norham Castle, guarding the ford; we all know the scene, castle and ford in the gloaming, from Turner's beautiful plate in _Liber Studiorum_. Bishop Flambard of Durham built the castle to bridle the wild Scots, in 1121; some twenty years later it was taken, under David; but the eastern side shows the remains of the warlike prelate's work. "The {048}Norman Keep still frowns across the Merse," and few of the castles of the age of chivalry display more of their ancient strength than Norham. Yet it yielded promptly to James IV. in the first week of the campaign which closed in the terrible defeat of Flodden Edge. In this castle, in the Lent of 1200, William the Lion kept his fast on fourteen kinds of fish, including salmon; he certainly "spelled his fasts with an e." While Berwick yielded to the Scots in the dark days of Edward II., good Sir Thomas de Grey, of that ancient Northumbrian house, held Norham stoutly, with pretty circumstances of chivalry, as his son tells in _Scalacronica_.