In the neighbourhood of the picturesque bridge which carries the Galashiels road across the river, and gives the passing traveller a glimpse both up and down stream which must make him hunger for more, is the site of the curious old drawbridge, if so it may be called, which belonged to the Pringles of Galashiels, afterwards of Whytbank, and consisted of three octangular towers or pillars, from the centre one of which the ward would, for a consideration, lay out planks, and so extemporise an elevated footway. It was this service which Peter refused to do for the sacristan of Kennaquhair when the holy man was bearing to the monastery the Lady of Avenel's heretical book. "Riding the water" on a moonlit night, he thought, would do the monk no harm; and so, though a "heavy water" was running, Father Philip had to ford the stream, with results so discomforting and mysterious. It was not only with Peter and his laird that the monks of St. Mary's had disputes. Even when the monastery was founded they were not quite unsusceptible to sports dear to the profane, for in the charter which gave them rights of forestry it was thought necessary to except hunting and the taking of falcons. As they waxed sleek they did not grow less selfish, or less tenacious of their rights; and so there was much contention between them and their neighbours, whose opinion about them sometimes found vent in catches of poetry. The men of God do not appear to have retaliated in verse. But there was the pulpit, and there were penances. Betwixt this point and Abbotsford the Alwyn and Gala Waters flow in--the one babbling down a glen which is in parts prettily wooded, and is recognised as the Glendearg where the Lady of Avenel spent the sad years of her widowhood; the other reeking with the chemical abominations of Galashiels. As the ascent is continued, the valley grows somewhat less rich in beauty, nor is it improved by the flaring red houses which look down upon Abbotsford from the slopes on the opposite bank. When Sir Walter acquired the estate--or, rather, the first bit of it--it must have been much less attractive than now. It was then a farm, a hundred acres in extent, and there was hardly a tree upon it. He was his own architect; and it was one of his boasts that there was not one of the trees which had not been planted under his direction. The house for which he is thus to be held responsible is scarcely imposing, nor can it be said to have the merit of consistency. You can see at a glance that it grew, rather than was made. On the whole, it is pleasing to the eye rather than to the architectural sense; and if, as has been said, its gables and sections and windows and turrets and towers are a little bewildering in their multitude and variety, one still ventures to think that it is better as it is, plentiful as may be its lack of plan, than it would be if it conformed more strictly to the conventional castellated type.