This increasing intimacy between the prisoners and the inhabitants displeased the Government, and the crisis came when, in return for the kindness shown them, the prisoners determined to erect a theatre: ‘The French prisoners were suffered to play only once in their theatre, and then the rout came for them. Amidst loud and sincere lamentation from all concerned, the officers were summarily removed in a body, and deposited in a town at some distance ... from their former guardians. As a final _gage d’amitié_ ... the owners of the theatre left it a a gift to the town.’ Later—in the ‘thirties—this theatre was annexed to the Grammar School to make extra class-rooms, for it was an age when Scotland was opposed to theatres. KELSO[14] For some of the following notes, I am indebted to the late Mr. Macbeth Forbes, who helped me notably elsewhere, and who kindly gave me permission to use them. Some of the prisoners on parole at Kelso were sailors, but the majority were soldiers from Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies, and about twenty Sicilians. The inhabitants gave them a warm welcome, hospitably entertained them, and in return the prisoners, many of whom were men of means, gave balls at the inns—the only establishments in these pre-parish hall days where accommodation for large parties could be had—at which they appeared gaily attired with wondrous frills to their shirts, and white stockings. ‘The time of their stay’, says Mr. Forbes, ‘was the gayest that Kelso had ever seen since fatal Flodden.’ Here as elsewhere there were artists among them who painted miniatures and landscapes and gave lessons, plaiters of straw and manufacturers of curious beautiful articles in coloured straw, wood-carvers, botanists, and fishermen. These last, it is said, first introduced the sport of catching fish through holes in the ice in mid-winter. Billiards, also, are said to have been introduced into Scotland by the prisoners. They mostly did their own cooking, and it is noted that they spoiled some of the landladies’ tables by chopping up frogs for fricassees. They bought up the old Kelso ‘theatre’, the occasional scene of action for wandering Thespians, which was in a close off the Horse-Market, rebuilt and decorated it, some of the latter work still being visible in the ceiling of the ironmongery store of to-day. One difficulty was the very scanty dressing accommodation, so the actors often dressed at home, and their passage therefrom to the theatre in all sorts of garbs was a grand opportunity for the gibes of the youth of Kelso. Kelso was nothing if not ‘proper’, so that when upon one occasion the postmistress, a married woman, was seen accompanying a fantastically arrayed prisoner-actor to the theatre from his lodging, Mrs. Grundy had much to say for some time. On special occasions, such as when the French play was patronized by a local grandee like the Duchess of Roxburgh, the streets were carpeted with red cloth.