in the Wars of the Roses, threw herself and infant son on the mercy of the bandit, and, as we all know, was safely harboured by him. At its mouth, too, on the Tyne, and just below Hexham, are the ruined towers of Dilston, home of the ill-fated Derwentwater, who was lord of all this country till the Jacobite rising of the "Fifteen" cost him his head and his heirs their vast estates. If there are no half-timbered cottages or few Tudor homesteads upon the Tyne, the valley still abounds in the remains of peel-towers and bastel houses, redolent of the raiding days; while here and there a great castle suggestive of some dominant name, some Warden of the March or Keeper of the dale, broods over the stream with its four grey towers and lofty curtains, and strikes a fine stern note against the waving background of the moorish hills of Hexhamshire. Dilston, as related, is below Hexham, and so is Prudhoe, the whilom fortress of Umfravilles and Percies, whose massive walls are yet more proudly perched. This South Tyne valley was thick with Ridleys and Featherstonhaughs, a very cradle of many families of which these were the chief. Men did not wander about the country and set up houses anywhere and everywhere in the old Border days. They were wanted at home, and by no means in demand in other dales, the stamping ground of other and probably unfriendly stocks, though some of them were badly enough wanted in another sense. Clans or "greynes" had to stick together both for purposes of offence and defence, and fighting men were valuable. Constant raids of Elliots, Armstrongs, Kerrs, and Scotts from beyond Cheviot and the necessity for retaliation kept both long dales of Tyne on the alert.