[Illustration] Tweed's Well lies in the bosom of solemn, bare hills. There is nothing attractive about the spot. Grey moorlands, riddled with innumerable inky peat-bogs, the whaups crying as Stevenson heard them in his dreams, and the bleat of an occasional sheep are the chief characteristics. There is little heather, and the hills are hardly so shapely as their neighbours further down the valley. A first glance is disappointing, but the memories of the place are compensation enough. For what a stirring place it must have been in the early centuries! Here, as tradition asserts, the pagan bard Merlin was converted to Christianity through the preaching of the Glasgow Saint Mungo. Here Michael Scot, the "wondrous wizard," pursued his mysteries. And even the Flower of Kings himself wandered amongst those wilds, "of fresh aventours dreaming." One of his twelve battles is claimed for the locality. More historic, perhaps, is the picture of the good Sir James of Douglas (red-handed from dirking the Comyn) plighting his troth to the Bruce at Ericstane Brae, close to Tweed's Well, which latter spot, by the way, Dr. John Brown characteristically describes in one of his shorter "Horae" papers. Readers of the "Enterkin" also will remember his reference to the mail-coach tragedy of 1831, when MacGeorge and his companion, Goodfellow, perished in the snow in a heroic attempt to get the bags through to Tweedshaws. At Tweedsmuir, (the name of the parish--disjoined from Drumelzier in 1643)--eight miles down, the valley opens somewhat, and vegetation properly begins. Of Tweedsmuir Kirk--on the peninsula between Tweed and Talla--Lord Cockburn said that it had the prettiest situation in Scotland. John Hunter, a Covenant martyr, sleeps in its bonnie green kirk-knowe--the only Covenant grave in the Border Counties outside Dumfries and Galloway. Talla Linns recalls the conventicle mentioned in the "Heart of Midlothian," at which Scott makes Davie Deans a silent but much-impressed spectator. In the wild Gameshope Glen, close by, Donald Cargill and James Renwick, and others lay oft in hiding. "It will be a bloody night this in Gemsop," are the opening words of Hogg's fine Covenant tale, the "Brownie of Bodsbeck." The Talla Valley contains the picturesque new lake whence Edinburgh draws its augmented water supply. Young Hay of Talla was one of Bothwell's "Lambs," and suffered death for the Darnley murder. At the Beild--regaining the Tweed--Dr. John Ker, one of the foremost pulpiteers of his generation, was born in 1819. Oliver Castle was the home of the Frasers, Lords of Tweeddale before they were Lords of Lovat. The Crook Inn was a noted "howff" in the angling excursions of Christopher North and the Ettrick Shepherd. Mr. Lang thinks that possibly the name suggested the "Cleikum Inn" of "St. Ronan's Well." At the Crook, William Black ends his "Adventures of a Phaeton" with the climax of all good novels, an avowal of love and a happy engagement.