"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 humdudgeon 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 corre

sponding 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 well-favoured buxom dame, welcomed her husband with unfeigned rapture. "Eh, sirs! gudeman, ye hae been a weary while away!"

The author may here remark, that the character of Dandie Dinmont was drawn from no individual. A dozen, at least, of stout Liddesdale yeomen with whom he has been acquainted, and whose hospitality he has shared in his rambles through that wild country, at a time when it was totally inaccessible save in the manner described in the text, might lay claim to be the prototype of the rough, but faithful, hospitable, and generous farmer. But one circumstance occasioned the name to be fixed upon a most respectable individual of this class, now no more. Mr. James Davidson of Hindlee, a tenant of Lord Douglas, besides the points of blunt honesty, personal strength, and hardihood, designed to be expressed in the character of Dandie Dinmont, had the humour of naming a celebrated race of terriers which he possessed, by the generic names of Mustard and Pepper (according as their colour was yellow, or greyish-black), without any other individual distinction, except as according to the nomenclature in the text. Mr. Davidson resided at Hindlee, a wild farm, on the very edge of the Teviotdale mountains, and bordering close on Liddesdale, where the rivers and brooks divide as they take their course to the Eastern and Western seas. His passion for the chase, in all its forms, but especially for fox-hunting, as followed in the fashion described in the next chapter, in conducting which he was skilful beyond most men in the South Highlands, was the distinguishing point in his character.

When the tale on which these comments are written became rather popular, the name of Dandie Dinmont was generally given to him, which Mr. Davidson received with great good humour, only saying, while he distinguished the author by the name applied to him in the country, where his own is so common

that the Sheriff had not written about him mair than about other folk, but only about his dogs." An English lady of high rank and fashion being desirous to possess a brace of the celebrated Mustard and Pepper terriers, expressed her wishes in a letter, which was literally addressed to Dandie Dinmont, under which very general direction it reached Mr. Davidson, who was justly proud of the application, and failed not to comply with a request which did him and his favourite attendants so much honour.

I trust I shall not be considered as offending the memory of a kind and worthy man, if I mention a little trait of character which occurred in Mr. Davidson's last illness. I use the words of the excellent clergyman who attended him, who gave the account to a reverend gentleman of the same persuasion:

"I read to Mr. Davidson the very suitable and interesting truths you addressed to him. He listened to them with great seriousness, and has uniformly displayed a deep concern about his soul's salvation. He died on the first Sabbath of the year (1820); an apoplectic stroke deprived him in an instant of all sensation, but happily his brother was at his bed-side, for he had detained him from the meeting-house that day to be near him, although he felt himself not much worse than usual. So you have got the last little Mustard that the hand of Dandie Dinmont bestowed.

"His ruling passion was strong even on the eve of death. Mr. Baillie's foxhounds had started a fox opposite to his window a few weeks ago, and as soon as he heard the sound of the dogs, his eyes glistened; he insisted on

getting out of bed, and with much difficulty got to the window, and there enjoyed the fun, as he called it. When I came down to ask for him, he said, 'he had seen Reynard, but had not seen his death. If it had been the will of Providence,' he added, 'I would have liked to have been after him; but I am glad that I got to the window, and am thankful for what I saw, for it has done me a great deal of good.' Notwithstanding these eccentricities (adds the sensible and liberal clergyman), I sincerely hope and believe he has gone to a better world, and better company and enjoyments."

If some part of this little narrative may excite a smile, it is one which is consistent with the most perfect respect for the simple-minded invalid, and his kind and judicious religious instructor, who, we hope, will not be displeased with our giving, we trust, a correct edition of an anecdote which has been pretty generally circulated. The race of Pepper and Mustard are in the highest estimation at this day, not only for vermin-killing, but for intelligence and fidelity. Those who, like the author, possess a brace of them, consider them as very desirable companions.

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 comforts of life. Their houses are more commodious, their habits of life regulated so as better to keep pace with those of the civilised 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, Dandie, wi' some o' the Bewcastle horsecoupers! 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 as 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 quarters we wadna refuse to the poorest body on earth -unless (her eye directed to the pocket-book, but with a feeling of natural propriety which made the inference the most delicate possible), unless there was ony other way" Brown saw, and estimated at its due rate, the mixture of simplicity and grateful generosity which took the downright way of expressing itself, yet qualified with so much delicacy; he was aware his own appearance, plain at best, and now torn and spattered with blood, made him an object of pity at least, and perhaps of charity. He hastened to say his name was Brown, a captain in the regiment of cavalry, travelling for pleasure, and on foot, both from motives of independence and economy; and he begged his kind landlady would look at her husband's wounds, the state of which he had refused to permit him to examine. Mrs. Dinmont was used to her husband's broken heads more than to the presence of a captain of dragoons. She therefore glanced at a table-cloth not quite clean, and conned over her proposed supper a minute or two, before, patting her husband on the shoulder, she bade him sit down for " a hard-headed loon, that was aye bringing himsell and other folk into collie-shangies."

When Dandie Dinmont, after executing two or three caprioles, and cutting the Highland fling, by way of ridicule of his wife's anxiety, at last deigned to sit down, and commit his round, black, shaggy bullet of a head to her inspection, Brown thought he had seen the regimental surgeon look grave upon a more trifling case. The gudewife, however, showed some knowledge of chirurgery-she cut away with her scissors the gory locks, whose stiffened and coagulated clusters interfered with her operations, and clapped on the wound some lint besmeared with a vulnerary salve, esteemed sovereign by the whole dale (which afforded upon Fair nights considerable experience of such cases)-she then fixed her plaster with a bandage, and, spite of her patient's resistance, pulled over all a night-cap, to keep everything in its right place. Some contusions on the brow and shoulders she fomented with brandy, which the patient did not permit till the medicine had paid a heavy toll to his mouth. Mrs. Dinmont then simply, but kindly, offered her assistance to Brown.

He assured her he had no occasion for anything but the accommodation of a basin and towel. "And that's what I should have thought of sooner," she said; "and I did think o't, but I durst na open the door, for there's a' the bairns, poor things, sae keen to see their father."

This explained a great drumming and whining at the door of the little parlour, which had somewhat surprised Brown, though his kind landlady had only noticed it by fastening the bolt as soon as she heard it begin. But on her opening the door to seek the basin and towel (for she never thought of showing the guest to a separate room), a whole tide of whiteheaded urchins streamed in, some from the stable, where they had been seeing Dumple, and giving him a welcome home with part of their four-hours scones; others from the kitchen, where they had been listening to auld Elspeth's tales and ballads; and the youngest half-naked, out of bed, all roaring to see daddy, and to inquire what he had brought home for them from the various fairs he had visited in his peregrinations. Our knight of the broken head first kissed and hugged them all round, then distributed whistles, penny-trumpets, and ginger-bread, and, lastly, when the tumult of their joy and welcome got beyond bearing, exclaimed to his guest"This is a' the gudewife's fault, captain-she will gie the bairns a' their ain way."