_bona fide_ proprietor; for three minutes' occupancy seemed to produce in him all the effects of the long positive prescription; and he never looked at an article of man's making, or nature's production, without considering whether it were a moveable or a fixture. [Footnote 13: The contract is extant in the charter-chest of the present representative. Neither Harden nor the Flower of Yarrow could write their names.--ED.] The only period of Harden's life in which his peculiar notions of _meum_ and _tuum_ were lost sight of, was during the sweet moon of his marriage with Mary Scott. For one lunation, the poor Border proprietors were safe; and, if the Harden motto, _Cornua reparabit Phoebe_, had any meaning in it, it was the only moon of his life that did not light him forth to commit some depredation. His marriage, with the slight exception already stated, had no such effect in modifying his appropriating spirit, as marriages now-a-days produce on reclaimed rogues or roués, for Mary Scott although the fairest of all the fair women of her time, had the same relish for cooking other people's kye, that her husband Walter felt in bringing them home. There was not a wife in all the Borders that served up "the feast of spurs" to her lord with greater regularity, and more attention to the rules of proper hussyskep, than the Flower of Yarrow. If Walter came in crying for supper-- "Haste ye, my dame--what cheer the night? I look to see your table dight; For I hae been up since peep o' light, Driving the dun deer merrilie"-- Her reply was just as spirited and ready;-- "Are ye sae keen set, Wat? 'Tis weel-- I'faith, ye'll find a dainty meal; For it's a' o' the guid Rippon steel, And ye maun digest it manfullie." The spirit of the riever, inborn, and strengthened by education and example, became, in the case of Harden, as it did in that of many a one else of the Border lairds, a regular household duty; and perhaps a more peaceable husband than he might have felt a difficulty in resisting the authority of so fair a governess as Mary Scott.