The town of Lockerbie is a thriving place, of a neatness and cleanliness altogether remarkable: a change indeed from the time when this rhyme was possible: Lockerbie is a dirty place, A kirk without a steeple, A midden set at ilka door— But a cantie set o’ people. New in appearance, with a modern Town Hall in a florid version of the Scotch baronial style, and an air of abounding prosperity. Here, in this considerable place of shops, the Southron who knows not Scotland first discovers what the Scottish nation can do in the way of scones, seed-cakes, plum-cakes, baps, and bannocks, to say nothing of shortbread. It is a liberal education, in its especial way. Five miles north of Lockerbie, Jardine Hall is passed, with the haunted ruin of Spedlin’s Tower away across the park. In another mile, at Dinwoodie Green, the road again divides into old road and new. The old road, running to the right hand, through the town of Moffat, over Ericstane Brae and down to Elvanfoot Bridge, a distance of twenty-three miles, is an excellent road still, but it ascends rugged and mountainous heights, while the “new road,” avoiding Moffat altogether, is at its highest altitude 500 feet below the summit of the old. Between the two roads on the way to Moffat runs the river Annan, and here and there are glens that at different times gave shelter to Covenanters and horse-stealing rascals. Wamphray Glen was one of the fastnesses of the Johnstones: the locality having from time immemorial been rich in Johnstones and Jardines. There was a Johnstone who lived in the old days at Lockerbie, in one of the numerous defensible towers of the district. He bore a more or less knightly part in the battle of Dryfe Sands, hard by, while at home his gentle lady with her own fair hands dinged in the head of Lord Maxwell with the castle keys. The new road continues, with few features on the way, on a gradual rise, to Beattock, crossing the Annan at Johnstone Bridge, a pretty wooded scene, with wayside post-office. Beattock was important in the old coaching days, for here, beside the road, in a spot otherwise lonely, stood Beattock Inn. Two miles down the road was Moffat. There was nothing else but that change-house for mail-coach and stage. The house remains even now, but no longer an inn, and adjoining it stands the Beattock station of the Caledonian Railway, which abolished coaching on this road over fifty years ago. Nowadays there is no house of public entertainment in all the thirty miles between Lockerbie and Crawford, on this modern road avoiding Moffat, except the refreshment room at Beattock station: the village that has in latter days sprung up here being quite innocent of anything of the kind. XXXII [Sidenote: _THE CARLISLE AND GLASGOW ROAD_]