Over against Innerleithen lies the parish of Traquair, with its burn and its "bush." A little to the south of the stream is Traquair House, a seventeenth-century residence tacked on to a much older tower. If the books could be believed, it would be the original of the Baron of Bradwardine's house. "Waverley" himself, however, was of a different opinion. The ruins of Horsburgh Castle, the seat of the family of this name, now for more than a hundred years abandoned to owl and bat, are about a couple of miles or so below Peebles. The town itself has a lovely situation at the point where Eddlestone Water babbles into the Tweed, and at the foot of a glorious brae, broad and lofty, and covered with fir and larch, with rolling hills all around, making a mighty amphitheatre. No wonder that it should have risen to the dignity of a holiday resort with a "season;" or that in other days the Hays of Yester should have been glad to come in from Neidpath Castle to winter in their town-house, the quaint old building in the High Street now known as the "Chambers Institute." In very early days Peebles was a dwelling-place of kings; and by the time of that James who was addicted to "the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making," it was renowned for its games, which were sung either by the monarch himself or by some brother minstrel of not much later date. But about the middle of the sixteenth century the Earl of Hertford came here, and then the town had to make a fresh start. The castle has disappeared from the head of the High Street without leaving a wrack behind. Of the Cross Kirk, built in the thirteenth century by Alexander III., little beyond the shell of the tower and a gable remains, and even the pitiful ivy has not been able to make it a sightly relic. There used to be here also the still older church of St. Andrew; and William Chambers has received much praise for having "restored" it--an exceptionally brutal use of a much-suffering term. The only other building of any note is the "Cross-Keys Inn," many-gabled and picturesque and comfortable. It has seen better days, for it was once upon a time the town-house of the Williamsons of Cardrona; but the crowning glory which it claims is that of being the "public" of Dame Dods, yclept the "Cleikum," which had for sign a large picture of St. Ronan catching hold of the devil's game leg with his episcopal crook. If you ask for evidence, you are pointed to the legend above the doorway, "The original Cleikum Inn, 1653"! [Illustration: PEEBLES, FROM A LITTLE BELOW NEIDPATH.]