It is nothing but an old toll-house on the north, or Scottish side of the river. But there’s the rub. It is the first spot on Scottish soil, and much virtue accordingly attached to it. The name of Gretna obscured those of all other places in the minds of strangers, but those on the spot, together with every post-boy between Carlisle and the Border, knew better; and those runaways who were so hard-pressed that the extra half-mile on to Springfield or Gretna meant all the difference between success and failure had cause to bless Sark Toll Bar, or Alison’s Bank Bar, as it is sometimes called. This was an inimical spot to parents and guardians, and a sad disillusion to all pursuers. Here fathers, hot on the heels of fugitives, were commonly foiled in the very cynthia of the minute. At the moment of triumphantly thinking they would, in that further half-mile, overtake their prey, Simon Beattie, the toll-keeper, was spiriting the fluttering young things into his innocent-looking whitewashed toll-house, and in the presence of the necessary two witnesses, including the grinning post-boy, was asking them the simple questions that sufficed: “Were they single?” and “Did they wish to become man and wife?” It was all over by the time the foaming enemy was cursing and kicking outside the barred and bolted door; and when Beattie unbolted it and introduced the newly-wed, there was nothing to do but try and look pleasant, or perhaps in extreme cases give young hopeful a horse-whipping; which, after all, was scarce politic. Simon Beattie, between four o’clock on a Saturday morning and the Sunday evening following, in November 1842, married no fewer than forty-five couples at Sark Toll Bar, and his successor, John Murray, in one night performed the same office for sixty-one. No wonder Murray thought it possible to amass a fortune here. He reared the “Sark Bar” inn close by, on the English side of the Sark, but he had not finished it when Lord Brougham’s Act, of 1856, ruining all these fugitive proceedings, came into operation; and there was an end of his hopes. [Sidenote: _RAILWAYS AND GRETNA GREEN_]