“But do you know, too,” says I, “that they are the severest people upon criminals of your kind in the world?” He did not value that, he said, in his blunt, short way; he would venture it. Upon this I told him that, seeing it was so, and he would run such ventures, I would take my leave of him and be gone back to England. He seemed sullen, or rather it was the roughness of his untractable disposition. He said I might do what I would, he would do as he found opportunity. However, we did not part immediately, but went on towards the capital city. On the road we found too much poverty and too few people to give him room to expect any advantage in his way; and though he had his eyes about him as sharp as a hawk, yet he saw plainly there was nothing to be done; for as to the men, they did not seem to have much money about them; and for the women, their dress was such that, had they any money, or indeed any pockets, it was impossible to come at them; for, wearing large plaids about them and down to their knees, they were wrapped up so close that there was no coming to make the least attempt of that kind. Kelso was indeed a good town, and had abundance of people in it; and yet, though he stayed one Sunday there, and saw the church, which is very large and thronged with people, yet, as he told me, there was not one woman to be seen in all the church with any other dress than a plaid, except in two pews, which belonged to some nobleman, and who, when they came out, were so surrounded with footmen and servants that there was no coming near them, any more than there was any coming near the king surrounded by his guards. We set out, therefore, with this discouragement, which I was secretly glad of, and went forward to Edinburgh. All the way thither we went through no considerable town, and it was but very coarse travelling for us, who were strangers; for we met with waters which were very dangerous to pass, by reason of hasty rains, at a place called Lauderdale, and where my captain was really in danger of drowning, his horse being driven down by the stream, and fell under him, by which he wetted and spoiled his stolen goods that he brought from Newcastle, and which he had kept dry strangely, by holding them up in his arms when he swam the Tweed. But here it wanted but little that he and his horse had been lost, not so much by the depth of the water as the fury of the current. But he had a proverb in his favour, and he got out of the water, though with difficulty enough, not being born to be drowned, as I shall observe afterwards in its place.