On each of the four main roads leading out of the town there was at the distance of a mile a notice-board on which was inscribed: ‘Limite des Prisonniers de Guerre.’ As evidence of the goodwill generally borne towards the foreigners by the country folk, when a waggish prisoner moved one of these boards a mile further on, no information was lodged about it, and although a reward of one guinea was paid to anybody arresting a prisoner beyond limits, or out of his lodgings at forbidden hours, it was very rarely claimed. Some of the prisoners indeed were accustomed daily to go fishing some miles down the rivers. The French prisoners did not visit the Selkirk townsfolk, for the ‘classy’ of the latter had come to the resolution not to associate with them at all; but the priggish exclusiveness or narrow prejudice, or whatever it might have been, was amply atoned for by the excellent friendships formed in the surrounding neighbourhoods. There was Mr. Anderson, a gentleman farmer, who invited the Frenchmen to fish and regaled them in typical old-time Scots fashion afterwards; there was a rich retired lawyer, whose chief sorrow was that he could not keep sober during his entertainment of them: there was Mr. Thorburn, another gentleman farmer, who introduced them to grilled sheep’s head, salmagundi, and a cheese of his own making, of which he was particularly proud. But above all there was the ‘shirra’, then Mr. Walter Scott, who took a fancy to a bright and lively young Frenchman, Tarnier by name, and often invited him and two or three friends to Abbotsford—Doisy calls it ‘Melrose Abbey’. This was in February 1812. Mrs. Scott, whom, Doisy says, Scott had married in _Berlin_—was only seen some minutes before dinner, never at the repast itself. She spoke French perfectly, says Doisy. Scott, he says, was a very different man as host in his own house from what they judged him to be from his appearance in the streets of Selkirk. ‘Un homme enjoué, à la physionomie ordinaire et peu significative, à l’attitude même un peu gauche, à la démarche vulgaire et aux allures à l’avenant, causées probablement par sa boiterie.’ But at Abbotsford his guests found him, on the contrary, a gentleman full of cordiality and gaiety, receiving his friends with amiability and delicacy. The rooms at Abbotsford, says Doisy, were spacious and well lighted, and the table not sumptuous, but refined.