It was a fine summer afternoon, when a carriage-and-four--a thing by no means uncommon in those days, though as rare as a bustard at present--dashed into the small town of Belford, at that sort of pace which shows well-paid postboys, if not well-fed horses. I find, by a statistical account of that part of Europe which lies between the Aln and the Tweed, and which in former days was frequently subjected to inundation from the great northern reservoir of mosstroopers, that, under the beneficial influence of a more civilized state of society, the small town of Belford had increased and prospered, till, on the day of which I am writing, it was computed to contain no less than one hundred and seventy-three-houses, and nine hundred and forty-seven inhabitants. The greater proportion of the inhabitants possessed no stockings, and very few shoes. I say the greater proportion; for it had been an immemorial privilege of that portion of the citizens of Belford which had not yet attained the age of fourteen, to wear upon their legs and feet the covering with which nature had provided them, and none else. Some of the higher classes, with that neglect of their rights which they often show, had suffered the privilege above mentioned to fall into desuetude. The children of the clergyman always, and of the Presbyterian minister sometimes, wore shoes and stockings. So also did those of the doctor, the lawyer, the two principal shopkeepers, and the landlord of the inn; but all, or very nearly all, the rest adhered to their right, with strong determination; and after the carriage ran a multitude of boys and girls, whose feet had never been tightened and spoiled by compression in cotton or leather. It was not, indeed, that the climate of Belford was particularly like that of Eden, which dispensed, as we all know, with the necessity of any great superfluity of garments. On the contrary, the north wind visited it fresh from home; so much so as to have generated a despair of cultivation, which after efforts have proved to be very unreasonable. Andrew Fairservice's crop of early nettles gave, in those days, a very fair specimen of the sort of horticulture practised at Belford; and, not very many years before the period of my tale, an old woman used to walk through the town with a basket on her arm, crying, at different seasons of the year, the following rare and in many instances unknown fruits, the names of which, be it remarked, I give in her own peculiar dialect, though I cannot convey to the reader any idea of the tone, something between a song and a squeal, in which she offered her produce to the public. "Hips, haws, slees, and bummle-berriers; cherries, ripe grosiers, nipes (turnips) sweet as honey!" were the sounds she uttered, and in them consisted very nearly the whole catalogue of fruit brought to market at Belford.