‘Ta main, bienfaisante et chérie, D’un exil vient essuyer les pleurs, Tu me vis loin de parens, de patrie, Et le même tombeau, lorsque tu m’as ravie, Renferme nos deux cœurs.’ The story is this. One of the French prisoners on parole at Dumfries fell in love with pretty Anna Grieve, and she regarded his suit with kindness. Had she lived they would probably have been married, for he was in a good position and in every way worthy of her hand. When she died in the flower in her youth, he was overwhelmed with grief, and penned the above-quoted epitaph. After a lapse of about forty-six years, a gentleman of dignified bearing and seemingly about seventy years old, entered St. Michael’s churchyard, and in broken English politely accosted Mr. Watson, who was busy with his chisel on one of the monuments. He asked to be shown the spot where Mademoiselle Grieve was buried, and on being taken to it exhibited deep emotion. He read over the epitaph, which seemed to be quite familiar to him, and it was apparent that it was engraved upon the tablets of his memory, he being none other than the lover of the lady who lay below, and for whom, although half a century had elapsed, he still retained his old attachment. (I should say here that for many of the details about Sanquhar and Dumfries I am indebted in the first place to Mrs. Macbeth Forbes, for permission to make use of her late husband’s notes on the prisoner-life at these places, and in the second to the hon. secretary of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, for the use of a résumé by him of those notes.) MELROSE In the life of Dr. George Lawson, of Selkirk, the French prisoners on parole at Melrose are alluded to. The doctor astonished them with his knowledge of the old-world French with which they were unacquainted, and several pages of the book are devoted to the eloquent attempts of one of the prisoners to bring him to the Roman Catholic communion. Appended to the minutes of the Quarterly Meeting of the Melrose Freemasons on September 25, 1813, in an account of the laying the foundation-stone of a public well, there is the following reference to the French prisoners interned at Melrose (the minutes of the Kelso, Selkirk, and other lodges record the fraternal exchange of courtesies, and the reception of these alien Brethren into the lodges, but at Melrose it would seem that these Brethren held a lodge of their own, which they no doubt worked in their native tongue and style, by leave and warrant of the Melrose Lodge): ‘The French Brethren of the Lodge of St. John under the distinctive appellation of _Benevolence_ constituted by the French prisoners of war on parole here, were invited to attend, which the Master, office-bearers, and many of the Brethren accordingly did.’