‘My direction: à Monsieur le Chevalier Lebas de Ste. Croix, Capitaine à la légion de l’Isère, caserne de La Courtille à Paris. P.S.—All my thanks and good wishes first to your family, to the family Waldie, Davis, Doctor Douglas, Rutherford, and my good landlady Mistress Elliot. ‘To Mister John Smith Esq., ‘bridge street, ‘Kelso, Scotland.’ (In Kelso, towards the end of 1912, I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. Provost Smith, grandson of the gentleman to whom the foregoing two letters were addressed, and Mr. Smith was kind enough to present me with a tiny ring of bone, on which is minutely worked the legend: ‘I love to see you’, done by a French officer on parole in Kelso in 1811.) The third letter is as follows: ‘Je, soussigné officier de la Légion d’Honneur, Lieutenant Colonel au 8^e Régiment de Dragons, sensible aux bons traitements que les prisonniers français sur parole en cette ville reçoivent journellement de la part de Mr. Smith, law agent, invite en mon nom et en celui de mes compagnons d’infortune ceux de nos compatriotes entre les mains desquels le hasard de la guerre pourroit faire tomber Mesdemoiselles St. Saure (?) d’avoir pour elles tous les égards et attentions qu’elles méritent, et de nous aider par tous les bons offices qu’ils pourront rendre à ces dames à acquitter une partie de la reconnaissance que nous devons à leur famille. ‘Kelso. 7 Avril, 1811. ‘DUDOUIT.’ SELKIRK In 1811, ninety-three French prisoners arrived at Selkirk, many of them army surgeons. Their mile limits from the central point were, on the Hawick road, to Knowes; over the bridge, as far as the Philiphaugh entries; and towards Bridgehead, the ‘Prisoners’ Bush’. An old man named Douglas, says Mr. Craig-Brown (from whose book on Selkirk, I take this information, and to whom I am indebted for much hospitality and his many pains in acting as my mentor in Selkirk), remembered them coming to his father’s tavern at Heathenlie for their morning rum, and astonishing the people with what they ate. ‘They made tea out of dried whun blooms and skinned the verra paddas. The doctor anes was verra clever, and some of them had plenty o’ siller.’ On October 13, 1811, the prisoners constructed a balloon, and sent it up amidst such excitement as Selkirk rarely felt. Indeed, the Yeomanry then out for their training could not be mustered until they had seen the balloon. A serious question came up in 1814 concerning the public burden which the illegitimate children of these gentlemen were causing, and complaints were sent to the Transport Office, whose reply was that the fathers of the children were liable to the civil law, and that unless they should provide for their maintenance, they should go to prison.