There was lately, it is said, a lady of ancient Border lineage, who sat one day with a grown-up daughter in the library of her ancestral home. It was the hunting season, and at intervals the two glanced anxiously from the windows in full expectation of seeing the hounds sweep in full cry over the fields of which the library commanded a view. "They must be coming," cried the daughter, starting up. "There's one of the stable-boys running over the lawn." And, indeed, past the old trees a youth was to be seen skirting the lawn, flying down terraces, making towards a burn which ran through the grounds before joining a small tributary of Tweed. At best speed mother and daughter followed the boy, who had halted excitedly by the burn side. But what the cause of his agitation might be they could not for the moment conjecture; certainly the burn had no apparent connection with hunting, nor indeed was there sign of horse or hound. What they found was something very different. A mile or so up the rivulet there was a farm-steading, and in that steading was the usual water-driven threshing-mill. It happened that this particular day had been selected by the farmer as one on which he might advantageously thrash part of his crop. Consequently, the water from his mill pond was now making a temporary spate in the little stream, which, in the course of nature, had caused many salmon to run their noses into the burn's unexplored meanderings. When the two ladies reached the stream's bank, they found the stable-lad up to his knees in the water, and a fish, not over silvery, already floundering high and dry, far from its native element; in shallow, broken water, two or three others vainly struggled to gain higher latitudes. "Oh-h! _mother!_" cried the daughter excitedly. And said the elder lady with little hesitation: "Get them out, Jim; get them out. We'll kipper them." Then, after a thoughtful pause: "I think I'd like to catch one myself." So into the water she plunged, and the three--the lady and her daughter and the stable-boy--were so busily and excitedly plowtering in the burn, engaged in this most nefarious and illegal capture of fish, that they failed to hear or to see that hounds and a full field had swept over the hill in front, and had checked, in full view of them, at a small strip of wood in their immediate neighbourhood; in fact, there was little doubt these poachers must, a few minutes before, have headed the fox. Most embarrassing of all, however, was the fact that amongst the riders was one in immaculate pink, whose face flushed a deeper shade than his coat as he pulled up not a hundred yards distant. For what must be the feelings of a Justice of the Peace, of strictest principles, who, without warning, lights upon the wife of his bosom, his innocent daughter, and one of his servants, all engaged in the most barefaced poaching?