It was told of him that he had once, when two couples at the same time required his services, married the wrong brides and bridegrooms. They were dismayed, but not Paisley, “Weel, then, ye can jist soort yersels,” said he. He was no ideal Cupid’s officer, for he was used cynically to remark that, although well paid for performing marriages, his fortune would be made in a week if he could with equal ease pronounce divorces. We are not to suppose that eloping pairs just went off quietly to the Border and were allowed to take their time on the journey. Not at all; and they usually, knowing that parents and guardians would soon be swiftly on their track, made what haste they could. Whether pursuers or pursued first reached the Border made all the difference, for although the Scots law would not help parents and guardians forbidding the ceremony, it was always possible for the choleric father of a sentimental young lady to seize her and to give young Lochinvar the taste of a horse-whip. Some of the races for Gretna Green were so near that the betting on the contendants was even amongst the excited spectators of the chase. A pedestrian on the English high-road within a mile of the Scotch boundary would be overtaken by a light travelling chariot, drawn at the rate of sixteen miles an hour by four of the fleetest post-horses that the host of Carlisle’s chief inn could afford. Each postilion would give his whip-hand horse a cut with his whip at every bound of the infuriated creature, whilst as frequently he plunged his spurs into the reeking flanks of the animal he bestrode. And as the riders passed him at their perilous speed, pale as death in their faces, whilst they flogged and spurred like jockeys at the finish of a neck-and-neck Derby, he would see the bridegroom’s head at the front window of the vehicle, and hear him screaming frantically, “Go it! Go it! We are getting away from them! Fifty guineas to each of you if we get there in time!” Another five minutes and the pursuers—two red-faced elderly gentlemen, whirled along at the same mad pace in a similar chariot, drawn by equally fleet horses—would dash past him. “How far ahead? Shall we catch them?” “Five minutes before you—not more.” The response would scarcely have been shouted out when the spectator would see the chase ended abruptly by the fall of a horse, the breaking of a trace, the upset of the carriage, or some other mishap that might just as well have befallen the fugitives and given the victory to their pursuers. [Sidenote: _ROBERT ELLIOT_]