[Footnote 87: A stage-coach, so called, which ran betwixt Edinburgh and Jedburgh.] I told you I should like to convert the present steading at Beechland into a little hamlet of laborers, which we will name Abbotstown. The art of making people happy is to leave them much to their own guidance, but some little regulation is necessary. In the first place, I should like to have active and decent people there; then it is to be considered on what footing they should be. I conceive the best possible is, that they should pay for their cottages, and cow-grass, and potato ground, and be paid for their labor at the ordinary rate. I would give them some advantages sufficient to balance the following conditions, which, after all, are conditions in my favor: _1st_, That they shall keep their cottages and little gardens, and doors, tolerably neat; and _2d_, That the men shall on no account shoot, or the boys break timber or take birds' nests, or go among the planting. I do not know any other restrictions, and these are easy. I should think we might settle a few families very happily here, which is an object I have much at heart, for I have no notion of the proprietor who is only ambitious to be lord of the "beast and the brute," and chases the human face from his vicinity. By the bye, could we not manage to have a piper among the colonists? We are delighted to hear that your little folks like the dells. Pray, in your walks try to ascertain the locality of St. John's Well, which cures the botts, and which John Moss claims for Kaeside; also the true history of the Carline's Hole. Ever most truly yours, W. SCOTT. {p.218} I hope Mrs. Laidlaw does not want for anything that she can get from the garden or elsewhere. TO DANIEL TERRY, ESQ. 8th February, 1818. MY DEAR TERRY,--Yours arrived, unluckily, just half an hour after my packet was in the post-office, so this will cost you 9_d._, for which I grieve. To answer your principal question first,--the drama is "Yours, Terry, yours in every thought."