of Berwick-on-Tweed; and here our Atkinson did a thriving business in the coupling line. One fine day he had gone to Berwick when a couple sought his service at the toll-house. A quaint fiction presumes that everybody knows the law; but here it turned out that nobody did, for the bride and groom instead of uniting themselves before the first comer rushed off to Berwick, and were there wedded by Lamberton. And not only was the affair a nullity; but the unfortunate coupler was sentenced to seven years’ transportation for offending against the English marriage laws. Most of them, however, that went North on marriage bent, took the Carlisle road. A few miles beyond that city the little river Sark divides the two countries. Just over the bridge is the toll-house: a footpath to the right takes you to Springfield. Till about 1826 the North road lay through this village; then, however, the way was changed, and ran by Gretna Green, which is nine and a half miles from Carlisle. These two places, together with the toll-house, are all in Gretna parish; but of course the best known is Gretna Green: “the resort” (wrote Pennant) “of all amorous couples whose union the prudence of parents or guardians prohibits.” The place acquired a world-wide fame: that English plays and novels should abound in references to it, as they had done to the Fleet, was only natural; but one of George Sand’s heroes elopes thither with a banker’s daughter, and even Victor Hugo hymns it in melodious verse, albeit his pronunciation is a little peculiar: La mousse des près exhale Avril, qui chante drin, drin, Et met une succursale De Cythère à Gretna Green. And how to explain the fact that people hurried from the remotest parts of Scotland as well as from England, though any square yard of soil “frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat’s” had served their purpose just as well? The parishioners, indeed, sought not the service of their self-appointed priest; but is there not an ancient saying as to the prophet’s lack of honour among his own people?