[Footnote 57: The late Right Honorable Robert Dundas of Arniston, Chief Baron of the Scotch Exchequer; one of Scott's earliest and kindest friends in that distinguished family.] The following letter, to the same noble friend, contains a slight allusion to this affair of the Barony; but I insert it for a better reason. The Duke had, it seems, been much annoyed by some depredations on his game in the district of Ettrick Water; and more so by the ill use which some boys from Selkirk made of his liberality in allowing the people of that town free access to his beautiful walks on the banks of the Yarrow, adjoining Newark and Bowhill. The Duke's forester, by name Thomas Hudson, had recommended rigorous measures with reference to both these classes of offenders, and the Sheriff was of course called into council:-- TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC., ETC., ETC. ABBOTSFORD, January 11, 1817. MY DEAR LORD DUKE,--I have been thinking anxiously about the disagreeable affair of Tom Hudson, {p.144} and the impudent ingratitude of the Selkirk rising generation, and I will take the usual liberty your friendship permits me, of saying what occurs to me on each subject. Respecting the shooting, the crime is highly punishable, and we will omit no inquiries to discover the individuals guilty. Charles Erskine, who is a good police-officer, will be sufficiently active. I know my friend and kinsman, Mr. Scott of Harden, feels very anxious to oblige your Grace, and I have little doubt that if you will have the goodness to mention to him this unpleasant circumstance, he would be anxious to put his game under such regulations as should be agreeable to you. But I believe the pride and pleasure he would feel in obliging your Grace, as heading one of the most ancient and most respectable branches of your name (if I may be pardoned for saying so much in our favor), would be certainly much more gratified by a compliance with your personal request, than if it came through any other channel. Your Grace knows there are many instances in life in which the most effectual way of conferring a favor is condescending to accept one. I have known Harden long and most intimately--a more respectable man, either for feeling, or talent, or knowledge of human life, is rarely to be met with. But he is rather indecisive--requiring some instant stimulus in order to make him resolve to do, not only what he knows to be right, but what he really wishes to do, and means to do one time or other. He is exactly Prior's Earl of Oxford:-- "Let that be done which Mat doth say." "Yea," quoth the Earl, "_but not to-day_." And so exit Harden, and enter Selkirk.