The stream has now been traced up for a distance of well-nigh seventy miles, yet Peebles is not much more than five hundred feet above the sea-level; herefrom the ascent is more obvious, though still quite gradual, for in the thirty miles or so yet to be traversed the rise is not more than a thousand feet. As they ripple by the town the waters sing a pretty song; but a stone's-throw or two above the comely old bridge which spans them close to where the castle frowned upon all who sought to cross it with hostile intent, it glides smooth and silent, as though it had fallen asleep. Now the valley narrows into a glen, winding and profound; and at Neidpath, in full view of the town, the river dwindles into the merest burn, which it would be no great feat to leap across. But what a burn, and what a glen! Nothing yet seen, or still to be seen, is quite so superb as what now meets the view. For here the braes on either side are steep, and of immense height, and smothered to their tops with firs and larches; and the stream winds more than ever, at one moment widening into still deep pools, at the next shrinking into a dancing rapid; and all around, wherever the eye turns, it rests upon large swelling hills, robed with verdure, and girdled with timber, and crowned with grey cairns. Surely the glen was not much more lovely in the days before the last Duke of Queensberry, to spite the next heir of entail, or to put money into his mistress's purse, barbarously cut down the noble avenue by which the castle was approached, and provoked Wordsworth to gibbet him in an indignant sonnet. Burns, by the way, was aroused to an even finer show of wrath by the similar havoc which "Old Q." had wrought at Drumlanrig, in Nithsdale. [Illustration: NEIDPATH CASTLE.] Neidpath Castle, however, has pleasanter associations with the bards. From the southern branch of the Frasers it passed to the Hays of Yester; and to the ninth lord of Yester, first Marquis of Tweeddale, is credited the earliest surviving lyric inspired by the Tweed. Here are two of the verses:-- "When Maggie and me were acquaint I carried my noddle fu' high; Nae lint-white in a' the grey plain, Nae gowdspink sae bonny as she. "I whistled, I piped, and I sang, I woo'd, but I came nae great speed; Therefore I maun wander abroad, And lay my banes far frae the Tweed." The man who wrote this pretty piece held his castle for Charles II., but it was unable to stand the brunt of Cromwell's cannon, and was not merely captured, but ruined. It was long untenanted, but has now by repair and addition been made habitable, though not more picturesque.