David was son to Saxon Margaret, St. Margaret, and from her perhaps the "sair sanct" inherited some of his gentleness. But also he had married Matilda of Northumberland, wealthy and a widow, and he preferred to remain on the highway to London rather than at Dunfermline. So he was much at Roxburgh. But the castle did not remain in Scottish or English hands. It was while curiously interested in a great Flemish gun that James II was killed by the explosion--and the siege of Roxburgh went on more hotly, and the castle was razed to its present low estate. To-day the silly sheep are cropping grass about the scant stones that once sheltered kings and defied them; and ash trees are the sole occupants of the once royal dwelling. To the American there is something of passing interest in the present seat of the Duke of Roxburgh, Floors castle across the Teviot. For the house, like many another Scottish house, still carries direct descent. And an heiress from America, like the heiress from Northumberland, unites her fortune with this modern splendour--and admits Americans and others on Wednesdays! The town of Kelso is charming, like many Tweed towns. It lies among the wooded hills; there is a greater note of luxury here. Scott called it "the most beautiful if not the most romantic village in Scotland." Seen from the bridge which arches the flood, that placid flood of Tweed, and a five-arched bridge ambitiously and successfully like the Waterloo bridge of London, one wonders if after all perhaps Wordsworth wrote his Bridge sonnet here--"Earth hath not anything to show more fair." Surely this bridge, these spires and the great tower of the Abbey, "wear the beauty of the morning," the morning of the world. The hills, luxuriously wooded, rise gently behind, the persistent Eildons hang over, green meadows are about, the silver river runs--and the skies are Scottish skies, whether blue or gray. The Abbey, of course, is the crown of the place, bolder in design and standing more boldly in spite of the havoc wrought by men and time, and Hertford and Henry VIII; calmer than Melrose, less ornamental, with its north portal very exquisite in proportion. The Abbot of Kelso was in the palmy early days chief ecclesiastic of Scotland, a spiritual lord, receiving his miter from the Pope, and armoured with the right to excommunicate.