ever, that their new opponent, was equally stout and resolute; and, after exchanging two or three blows, one of them told him to "follow his nose over the heath, in the devil's name, for they had nothing to say to him."

Brown rejected this composition, as leaving to their mercy the unfortunate man whom they were about to pillage, if not to murder outright; and the skirmish had just recommenced, when Dinmont unexpectedly recovered his senses, his feet, and his weapon, and hasted to the scene of action. As he had been no easy antagonist, even when surprised and alone, the villains did not choose to wait his joining forces with a man who had singly proved a match for them both, but fled across the bog as fast as their feet could carry them, pursued by Wasp, who had acted gloriously during the skirmish, annoying the heels of the enemy, and repeatedly effecting a moment's diversion in his master's favour.

"Deil, but your dog's weel entered wi' the vermin now, Sir!” were the first words uttered by the jolly farmer, as he came up, his head streaming with blood, and recognized his deliverer and his little attendant.

"I hope, Sir, you are not hurt dangerously?”

"O, deil a bit-my head can stand a gaye clour-nae thanks to them, though, and mony to you. But now, hinney, ye maun help me to catch the beast, and ye maun get on behind me, for we maun off like whittrets before the whole clanjamfray be doun upon us- the rest o' them will no be far off." The galloway was, by good fortune, easily caught, and Brown made some apology for overloading the animal.

-

"Deil a fear, man," answered the proprietor, "Dumple could carry six folk, if his back was lang eneugh but God's sake, haste ye, get on, for I see some folk coming through the slack yonder, that it may be just as weel no to wait for."

Brown was of opinion, that this apparition of five or six men, with whom the other villains seemed to join company, coming across the moss towards them, should abridge ceremony; he therefore mounted Dumple en croupe, and the little spirited nag cantered away with two men of great size and strength, as if they

had been children of six years old. The rider, to whom the paths of these wilds seemed intimately known, pushed on at a rapid pace, managing, with much dexterity, to choose the safest route, in which he was aided by the sagacity of the galloway, who never failed to take the difficult passes exactly at the particular spot, and in the special manner, by which they could be most safely crossed. Yet, even with these advantages, the road was so broken, and they were so often thrown out of the direct course by various impediments, that they did not gain much on their pursuers. "Never mind," said the undaunted Scotsman to his companion, "if we were ance by Withershin's latch, the road 's no near sae saft, and we 'll show them fair play for 't."

They soon came to the place he named, a narrow channel, through which soaked, rather than flowed, a small stagnant stream, mantled over with bright green mosses. Dinmont directed his steed towards a pass where the water appeared to flow with more freedom over a harder bottom; but Dumple backed from the proposed crossing place, put his head down as if to reconnoitre the swamp more nearly, stretching forward his forefeet, and stood as fast as if he had been cut out of stone.

"Had we not better," said Brown, "dismount, and leave him to his fate or can you not urge him through the swamp?" "Na, na," said his pilot, "we maun cross Dumple at no rate - he has mair sense than mony a Christian." So saying, he relaxed the reins, and shook them loosely. "Come now, lad, take your ain way o't- let's see where ye 'll take us through."

Dumple, left to the freedom of his own will, trotted briskly to another part of the latch, less promising, as Brown thought, in appearance, but which the animal's sagacity or experience recommended as the safer of the two, and where, plunging in, he attained the other side with little difficulty.

"I'm glad we 're out o' that moss," said Dinmont, "where there's mair stables for horses than change-houses for men-we have the Maiden-way to help us now, at ony rate." Accordingly, they speedily gained a sort of rugged causeway so called, being the remains of an old Roman road, which traverses these wild regions in a due northerly direction. Here they got on at the rate

of nine or ten miles an hour, Dumple seeking no other respite than what arose from changing his pace from canter to trot. "I could gar him show mair action," said his master, “but we are twa lang-legged chields after a', and it would be a pity to stress Dumple there wasna the like o' him at Staneshiebank fair the day."

Brown readily assented to the propriety of sparing the horse, and added, that as they were now far out of the reach of the rogues, he thought Mr. Dinmont had better tie a handkerchief round his head, for fear of the cold frosty air aggravating the wound.

"What would I do that for?" answered the hardy farmer; "the best way's to let the blood barken upon the cut-that saves plasters, hinney."

Brown, who in his military profession had seen a great many hard blows pass, could not help remarking, "he had never known such severe strokes received with so much apparent indifference."

"Hout tout, man - I would never be making a hum-dudgeon about a scart on the pow but we 'll be in Scotland in five minutes now, and ye maun gang up to Charlies-hope wi' me, that's a clear case.'

Brown readily accepted the offered hospitality. Night was now falling, when they came in sight of a pretty river winding its way through a pastoral country. The hills were greener and more abrupt than those which Brown had lately passed, sinking their grassy sides at once upon the river. They had no pretensions to magnificence of height, or to romantic shapes, nor did their smooth swelling slopes exhibit either rocks or woods. Yet the view was wild, solitary, and pleasingly rural. No enclosures, no roads, almost no tillage it seemed a land which a patriarch would have chosen to feed his flocks and herds. The remains of here and there a dismantled and ruined tower, showed that it had once harboured beings of a very different description from its present inhabitants; those freebooters, namely, to whose exploits the wars between England and Scotland bear witness.

Descending by a path towards a well-known ford, Dumple

crossed the small river, and then quickening his pace, trotted about a mile briskly up its banks, and approached two or three low thatched houses, placed with their angles to each other, with a great contempt of regularity. This was the farm-steading of Charlies-hope, or, in the language of the country, "the Town." A most furious barking was set up at their approach, by the whole three generations of Mustard and Pepper, and a number of allies, names unknown. The farmer made his well-known voice lustily heard to restore order the door opened, and a half-dressed ewe-milker, who had done that good office, shut it in their faces, in order that she might run ben the house, to cry “Mistress, mistress, it's the master, and another man wi' him.” Dumple, turned loose, walked to his own stable-door, and there pawed and whinnied for admission, in strains which were answered by his acquaintances from the interior. Amid this bustle, Brown was fain to secure Wasp from the other dogs, who, with ardour corresponding more to their own names than to the hospitable temper of their owner, were much disposed to use the intruder roughly.

In about a minute a stout labourer was patting Dumple, and introducing him into the stable, while Mrs. Dinmont, a wellfavoured buxom dame, welcomed her husband with unfeigned rapture. Eh, Sirs! gudeman, ye hae been a weary while away!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

Liddell till now, except in Doric lays,

Tuned to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
Unknown in song — though not a purer stream
Rolls towards the western main.

Art of Preserving Health.

THE present store-farmers of the south of Scotland are a much more refined race than their fathers, and the manners I am now to describe have either altogether disappeared, or are greatly modified. Without losing the rural simplicity of manners, they now cultivate arts unknown to the former generation, not only in the progressive improvement of their possessions, but in all the

* See Note C. Dandie Dinmont.

comforts of life. Their houses are more commodious, their habits of life regulated so as better to keep pace with those of the civilized world, and the best of luxuries, the luxury of knowledge, has gained much ground among their hills during the last thirty years. Deep drinking, formerly their greatest failing, is now fast losing ground; and, while the frankness of their extensive hospitality continues the same, it is, generally speaking, refined in its character, and restrained in its excesses.

"Deil's in the wife," said Dandie Dinmont, shaking off his spouse's embrace, but gently and with a look of great affection; "deil's in ye, Ailie - d'ye no see the stranger gentleman?"

Ailie turned to make her apology—"Troth, I was sae weel pleased to see the gudeman, that — But, gude gracious! what's the matter wi' ye baith?"—for they were now in her little parlour, and the candle showed the streaks of blood which Dinmont's wounded head had plentifully imparted to the clothes of his companion as well as to his own. "Ye 've been fighting again, Dandy, wi' some o' the Bewcastle horse-coupers! Wow, man, a married man, wi' a bonny family like yours, should ken better what a father's life's worth in the warld.". The tears stood in the good woman's eyes as she spoke.

"Whisht! whisht! gudewife,” said her husband, with a smack that had much more affection than ceremony in it; "Never mind

never mind- - there's a gentleman that will tell you, that just when I had ga'en up to Lourie Lowther's, and had bidden the drinking of twa cheerers, and gotten just in again upon the moss, and was whigging cannily awa hame, twa land-loupers jumpit out of a peat-hag on me or I was thinking, and got me down, and knevelled me sair aneuch, or I could gar my whip walk about their lugs and troth, gudewife, if this honest gentleman hadna come up, I would have gotten mair licks than I like, and lost mair siller than I could weel spare; so ye maun be thankful to him for it, under God." With that he drew from his side-pocket a large greasy leather pocket-book, and bade the gudewife lock it up in her kist.

"God bless the gentleman, and e'en God bless him wi' a' my heart but what can we do for him, but to gie him the meat and