It appeared, therefore, that this hoard was a relic of one of the sea-rovers’ raids on this coast in the fifth or sixth century, and that the spoils had in some cases come from plundered religious houses. The raiders were perhaps disturbed in their activities, and buried their loot in the expectation of returning for it at some more suitable time. But they never returned. What happened to them is a vain conjecture. They may have been found here and slain by some stronger force, and perhaps they were lost at sea. In any case, their hoard lay here for close upon one thousand five hundred years. What they had hoped to carry away is now an exhibit in the Scottish National Museum at Edinburgh. To the north-going cyclist the road presently makes ample amends for the mile-long rise, for, once topping it, a gentle but continuous descent of four miles leads into Haddington, down a road that for the most part could scarce be bettered, so excellent its surface, so straight its course, and so beautifully sylvan its surroundings. Hailes Castle is finely seen on the left during this descent, its ruined walls and ivy-covered towers wrapped three parts round with the thick woodlands that clothe the lower slopes of Traprain Law. Mary, Queen of Scots, and her evil spirit, the sinister Bothwell, had Hailes Castle for their bower of love, and Wishart the martyr had a cell in it for a prison, so that its present beauty of decay lacks nothing of historic interest. Nor does the fine mansion of Amisfield, through whose park-like lands the road now descends. Amisfield has lurid associations. Under the name of New Mills, it was in 1687 the scene of a dreadful parricide, and was at a later period purchased by the infamous Colonel Francis Charteris, who might aptly be termed (in Mr. Stead’s phrase), the Minotaur of his day. It was he who renamed it after the home of his family in Nithsdale. As his exploits belong chiefly to London, we, fortunately, need not enlarge upon them here. The parricide already referred to was the murder of his father by Philip Standsfield. Sir James Standsfield had set up a cloth factory here, on the banks of the Tyne, and had done remarkably well. He had two sons, Philip and John. The eldest had been a scapegrace ever since that day when, as a student at St. Andrews, he had gone to a meeting-house and flung a loaf at the preacher. It took the astonished divine on the side of the head and aroused within him the spirit of prophecy. Addressing the crowded chapel at large (for the loaf had been thrown unseen from some dark corner), he saw in a vision the death of the culprit, at whose end there would be more present than were hearing him that day; “and the multitude then present,” adds the chronicler, “was not small.”