No less than three thousand Northumbrians are said to have received the sacrament of baptism at this place, a statement which will seem the less incredible if we consider that Northumbria was then the most powerful and populous of the Saxon kingdoms. The famous well lies by the junction of two Roman ways, in a little grove of fir-trees, where the water still bubbles up actively through the sand and gravel. There is above it a stone cross with this inscription: "In this place Paulinus the Bishop baptised 3,000 Northumbrians, Easter, DCXXVII." Under the brow of Simonside, which is a huge shoulder of mountain thrusting itself up suddenly from the ascending land, there are a few cottages, and one great house, and a mill where are manufactured the Cheviot tweeds. This is the village of Tosson. Hence one looks away across the Coquet to the long range of the Cheviot hills, which seem surprisingly near, and yet are separated from Coquetside by many a mile of rich and pleasant pasture land. The ancient village of Rothbury is close at hand, with its one long street dipping down from the moorside to the Coquet banks, with its picturesque "Thrum Mill," its ancient church tower, and its great expanse of furze-bestrewn moors, amid the nearest of which Cragside, the residence of Lord Armstrong, is set. "An Act of Parliament is out of breath before it reaches Rothbury," say the people of the place. It is a saying which has survived from the pre-railroad days, when this portion of the wild Border land seemed as much cut off from the rest of England as if it had been islanded by the sea. Nor, indeed, is the sea so far away. On clear days one may behold it from the top of Simonside, a thin grey streak, scarcely distinguishable from the greyness of the sky. A turbulent little town was Rothbury in its earlier days. It was here that Bernard Gilpin took down from the church door a glove which had been hung up as a challenge to all and sundry, and then preached a powerful sermon on the wickedness of private war. In the same church many years ago an old man who was listening to a condemnation of robbery rose up and said, "Then the de'il I give my sall to, bot we are all thieves." Happily that broad statement no longer applies. The people of Rothbury and the region beyond are honest, stalwart, hard-working, prosperous folk, given to no pursuit more lawless than the occasional poaching of bull trout.