In Warkworth, small as it is, one feels everywhere the influence of the past. History seems to keep guard over it as an important part of its story. In 737 it was conferred by King Ceowulph on the monastery of Lindisfarne. The town was burnt in 1174 by the army of William the Lion, who was something of a poltroon. King John visited the place in the thirteenth century, and did much mischief farther up the river. General Forster and his Jacobites were here in 1715. That very Mr. Patten who is a principal figure in Mr. Besant's "Dorothy Forster" writes:--"It may be observed that this was the first place where the Pretender was so avowedly pray'd for and proclaimed as King of these realmes." From the turrets of Warkworth Castle one looks over a wide expanse of land and sea. The coast line is visible for great distances, beyond Alnmouth and Dunstanborough on the one hand, and almost to Tynemouth on the other. The great towers of Alnwick are in sight, and mile on mile of the most fertile land in Northumberland, and mile on mile of rabbit-haunted sandhills by the sea. Just beyond the Castle the land slopes downward, past a cottage or two, and a little wood, and a great clump of whin-bushes, to the Coquetside, and then the river flows through flat marsh-land until the small seaport town of Amble is reached. I have never seen those Essex salt marshes in which Mr. Baring-Gould lays the scene of his powerful "Mehalah," but whenever I read the book I am reminded of the country from Warkworth to the sea. Amble has grown up on a steep above the river; but there are flat spaces all round about it, and the river seems to stagnate where barges and schooners lie grounded in the mud, and beyond the harbour there are great level fields between "the bents" and the sea. Not a cheery place, by any means. Amble is one of the smaller outlets of the Northumberland coal trade. In very early days the Romans had some sort of encampment here, and in the Middle Ages Amble had its Benedictine monastery. It is now an exceedingly prosaic little town, with a harbour quite out of proportion to its size, and with an evident intention of "getting on." [Illustration: HUNTING ON COQUETSIDE. (_From the Picture by Colonel Lutyens, by Permission of Major Browne, Doxford Hall, Northumberland._)]