see amang ten thousand. It was a pleasure to see him in his belted plaid and brogues, wi' his target at his back, and claymore and dirk at his belt, following a hundred Highland stots, and a dozen o' the gillies, as rough and ragged as the beasts they drave. And he was baith civil and just in his dealings; and if he thought his chapman had made a hard bargain, he wad gie him a luck-penny to the mends. I hae ken'd him gie back five shillings out o' the pund sterling." It was by this way, likewise, if all tales be true, that Davie Balfour footed it from Kirk Essendean to the House o' Shaws to claim his inheritance and set out on his adventures; a raw boy, ill-clad and homely, not yet the friend of Alan Breck and still unaware of Catriona.

But the tangible relics of the past are few and far apart. Sheep pass by this road on their way to local markets, but it is rarely indeed that flocks come from more distant places. Perhaps once in a while a drove may come, and then it is somewhat belated and out of place. In the old days when great roaring herds of cattle came through the villages, it was a sight worth the seeing. For days, maybe, the Brig of Peebles would be all but blocked, and little boys coming home from school would be sadly delayed and go dinnerless. Now this is gone, and at best you may see a few poor dozen of beasts in front of a towsy man. At night you chance to see a light on the Drove-Road and, going near, find that it is the apology for a camp-fire by which the drovers sleep, while their charge lie silent around them. Early in the morning they are gone, and one may wait a score of months for their successors.

So if the human interest of the road lies but in memory, we are perforce driven to the natural side, its manifold beauty and the charms which come to it from the living air

and the blue sky. It has been untilled for centuries. No man pos

sesses it, though all have the right of way and pasture; so its face remains unchanged since cateran and kyloe passed over it. It is not like other roads in avoiding the rough places and skirting hills. It fears but one thing in the world,-a peat-bog; for the rest, it makes its way straight over the summit of ridges, climbs the barest hillsides, and in general goes as the crow flies across the land. It is this indomitable feature which gives it much of its peculiar charm, for in a short six miles by this path a man may have a taste of as many varieties of scenery. Now it is on the high lands, and the grass is short and springy, the heath deep, and a great gray rock juts up every now and then through a tangle of blaeberries and heather. Grouse haunt it, strutting at evening on its slopes; and the hill-sheep stray thither, seeking fresh pasture. Behind and before there is a landscape wide to the eye, and the fresh hill-air makes the place a delight to the beholder. We have said that the men who first used it were lavish of human labour, for when by turning a little way to the right or left a steep ridge might have been saved, the road, scorning such compromise, dips from the hill-top sheer down into the glen, and then toils painfully up the further side.

But in a few miles all is changed. We find ourselves in a Lowland valley among meadows and green woods, where the road runs evenly between hedges. In such a place too often it tends to merge itself in the highway but in certain parts it is still intact. Here the grass is ranker, and the cottager's cow makes its living along it.

In one place of our acquaintance it plunges into a deep pinewood, and passes through, a green ribbon between inky borders. Rabbits now frequent it, and partridges rise startled from

flames from the hedgerows, and in spring the grass is white with the petals of the hawthorn. Sometimes in these parts the road suddenly approaches a village, and little cottages spring up beside its track. Then it Then it becomes in the language of the folk a loan, or loaning, and the chosen playground of children.

Many are the delights of the place to the man of leisure who has time to linger often by it. The charms of old association are there, a thousand memories of the past, clearer and more tangible than those which attend other relics of age, inasmuch as the past in this instance borders so nearly with the present. Then there are the more peculiar pleasures of the way, which lures a man on to follow its winding course, promising new beauty round every turning. There is a pathetic story of some French prisoners at Peebles in the opening of the century who were permitted to take their daily walk to the first milestone on the western road. This lay just before the gorge at Neidpath, so the noble view of the valley which waits beyond it was not for them.

But

they, poor fellows, longed so ardently for the forbidden sight that by a united conspiracy they lifted the milestone and carried it round the corner. On this Drove-Road we are all like these Frenchmen; we cannot rest till we see for ourselves what lies over yon ridge or round yonder clump of trees. So we go on and ever on, heedless of meals and the passing of time; which is a fact alike in Tweedside topography and the conduct of life; for is not half our action prompted by a restless desire to scan the horizon and look over hill-tops?

garden of flowers.

One may lie a long summer's day on the grass in perfect quietness, and see nothing but the life of the fields. In spring, if anything, it is somewhat bleak, for the bent is still gray from the winter cold and the air is often not a little chill; but in summer it is one long strip of El Dorado, the chosen haunt of birds and a very garden of flowers. The long whistle of the curlew and the mellow lark are there, and on the ground underfoot milkwort and eyebright, yellow and blue mountain pansies, and the little stars of the grass of Parnassus light up the green with colour. The singular, half acrid smell of the hills is sweetened with languid thyme, and the noise of bees fills the drowsy air. In autumn come the red heather and the black blaeberries, and now is the time of golden and russet tints on leaf and stalk. Then succeeds winter, when all is deserted, when not even a sheep comes thither, but snowdrifts fill the hollow and the frost holds burn and moss.

For the road is deserted as few can be said to be in our populous times. Not many travel by it; you may meet, perhaps, a shepherd striding homewards to some outlying cottage, or a ploughman going to visit his sweetheart; sometimes even you light on a belated tourist who cares naught for the place and curses its asperity. But for the most part you are left alone to lord it over all in solitary magnificence. Yet the land is haunted by a thousand memories. Here in this quiet spot they are brought together for the wanderer, till the past is inextricably blended with the present. And still a man may fancy that he hears on this green, unvisited way the bleating of sheep, the menace of visionary dogs, and the confused speech of drovers who have long since ceased from their toil.

Two summers had past and gone since Murty O'Sullivan and I sat upon the mountain side above Glanbeg, when he told me the sad story of Norry O'Halloran and her lover. I had been abroad meanwhile, and had not revisited my old fishinggrounds.

Murty came over to see me on the day of my return, and after the first greetings I lit my pipe, and, having seated myself on a bench in front of my cottage, I waited, expecting him, as was his wont, to give me an account of all that had happened during my long absence.

"Did she go to America?" "She did not, yer Honour." "Then where is she in the name of wonder, if she's neither evicted, nor here, nor in America?"

"I don't know for sure, yer Honour."

"Where do you think she is? Why don't you speak out?"

"I think she's in hell, yer Honour; but if she is not there, she's in the most sulthry corner of purgathory, anyways."

"Dead!" said I. "What did she die of?"

"The Jury said she was found dhrownded."

purgatory also?"

Is he in

"No, God be praised! He made his escape from it when she wasdhrownded; and then he went to America."

"Murty," said I after a pause, which he did not seem inclined to break, "tell me the truth, and the whole of it; you know I'm safe."

"Didn't I tell ye?" said he, "Judy was found dhrownded, and Patsey went to America, and I can't say for certain where either of them is this day. What more d'ye want?"

I noticed that he would not look me in the face, and knowing him well, I was sure that he was keeping something back, so I turned away with an offended air, and taking up my glasses, levelled them at a fishingboat in the bay which was getting her trawl aboard.

"That's Martin Twomey's boat,

and she's had a fine sayson so far," said he.

I took no notice.

66 Will yer Honour be pleased to come and take a look at the river? 'Tis no day for fishin', but the wather is clear, and I'll show ye the fish jostling each other in the pools in a way that will delight ye."

I pretended not to hear, and after one or two more attempts to engage me in conversation he at last broke out as I expected.

"Ye says ye're safe, and I knows it. Will ye pass me yer word as a gintleman that ye'll never mintion a word that I tell ye till I'm dead. Will ye?"

"I will," said I.

"Give me the hand on it," and we shook hands solemnly. "Now what do ye want to know?"

"How did Judy come by her death? She didn't drown herself, I'm sure." "She did not. Maybe if she had sinse she would; 'twould have been betther for her."

"Who drowned her then?"

"Oh, never mind who dhrownded her. Meself doesn't rightly know, and if I tould ye, ye wouldn't be much the wiser; but this was how it come about. There was an evicted farm convaynient to the father's ould place. She went to live in the house afther his death, ye may remimber. She was always covetous, and nothin' would do her but to take the farm though it was boycotted. One Mat Murphy, him that was formerly a corn-merchant in Fermoy, was the landlord. Them half sirs are always the hardest landlords, as ye knows. They has no more bowels for a poor man than an anvil. Well, she had plinty of warning. Bad as she was the boys wouldn't send her before her God widout due notice; but she was as bould as she was bad, and she only snapped her fingers at them."

"She took the farm? Her husband took it you mean, don't you?"

"No, I don't. The husband never did anything but to work on the farm. when it plased him, and to get dhrunk whenever he got the chance. She sold the cattle and kept the purse and everything. They say that from the day he married her, he never even spoke to her, except when he was dhrunk, and thin he gave her his mind; and the quare thing was, that she never revinged herself on him aftherwards."

"Tell me, Murty," said I, "was she sweet on him before she married him?"

"I can't say for sure," replied he after a pause; "but meself often thought that same, and maybe that's the best excuse that can be made for her. Well, anyways the boys sarved him wid a threat'nin' notice as well as her; but that was only a blind, as ye'll see later on, for every one was sorry for the crayture, and the ould priest when he came back was just mad, and the coadjuthor had a bad time wid him, I'll promise ye, as long as he stopped in the parish.

"Well, the boys met one night in the beginning of December last year, and she was tried fair and honest; him that sarved her wid the notice proved that she had resaved it, and the captain axed if any one would spake up for her, but though there was a near relation of her own to the fore, no one would say a good word for her, and she was condemned to die."

"Who was the captain, Murty?" "Oh, Captain Moonlight to be sure. Ye wouldn't be the wiser if I tould

ye, for he was a sthranger from another county that the Land League brought to do the job; and that night they settled on the plan and the time."

"I was not," said he fiercely, but I think he lied.

"One wild moonlight night, not long before Christmas, they surrounded the house-five of them. The poliss was sent away on a wrong scent. Them poliss is sharp enough, I'll allow, at odd times; but when they has a fool of a sargint wid a wife that do be listenin' to stories from other wimin, 'tis asy enough to carcumvent 'em. The poliss would be a dale more dangerous if them married sargints was all kep' in a rookery by themselves, where their wimin could fight in peace and injoy themselves; but that's neither here nor there.

"There was no one widin but herself and Patsey and the sarvent-boy and a shlip of a girl. Patsey, by good luck for him anyways, had broke his leg three weeks before, comin' dhrunk from the fair, and was lyin' helpless.

""Twas about two o'clock in the mornin', a wild and terrible night, wid a venomous wind from the north tarin' past the moon, and screechin' along the say that was as black as ink, for the wind was off shore and there was no waves, the wather bein' bate down wid the strength of it.

"She bolted and barred the doors every night, and she kep a dog as wicked as herself, and she had a gun loaded always, and she was a bould woman as I said, and feared no man. I'm tould there was some one inside in the plot, the sarvent-boy maybe, or the girl for all she looked so innocent, for neither of them had much love for her. Anyways they got in through a windy that they found open, two of them, and the other three shtopped outside, and they came in widout noise, for the dog, I'm tould, was pisoned; but as they were crossin' the flure of the kitchen, makin' for the door to open it, one of thim stumbled, and maybe because she had the bad conscience and couldn't sleep, or maybe

because something tould her that her end was near, she waked up suddint and called out Who's there?' and in a flash she was out on them wid a light and wid the gun in her hand.

"Patsey was lyin' sleepin' on the settle in the kitchen, wid the leg of him sthrapped up, and he woke too. They had crape on their faces, but she knew them well, and 'so and so' ses she, namin' a name, 'it's you, is it? I thought so,' and she up wid the gun and let dhrive at him instintainyous; but the gun missed, belike some one had wathered it; and she caught it by the muzzle and dhrew a sketch of a sthroke at him that would kill two men, but he jumped a one side, and before she could recover herself he had his arms round her, and he threw her on the flure, and held her while the other opened the door.

"Then they tied her wid a soft bit of cotton webbing that would lave no mark, for a reason that you will see presently, and they sat down peaceable and quiet to have a dhrink.

"One of thim brought in the boy and the girl and tied them too; but they didn't appear to mind, so I suppose they were in the plot.

"Patsey looked round dazed like. 'What's the matther, boys?' ses he, and why would ye be breaking into an honest man's house at this hour of the night like robbers?'

"We're no robbers,' ses the captain. 'Ye had the warning, hadn't ye? "Tis the ordher, and we've got to obey it.'

"Oh, about Shea's farm. 'Twas agin my will she tuk it, and I'd have made her give it up before now, only I was hampered wid the leg.'

"Would ye?' ses Judy from the flure, and she tried to get her arms free, but it was no use. She was twistin' and spittin' like a mad cat wid rage. 'I know ye-every man of ye,' ses she, 'except that black