THE GOOD OLD TIMES.

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fought in defence of their Cattle. The advantage of the Union was so great to these Countries, that the Lord Grey, of Wark's Estate, which, before, was not above 1000l. per Annum, hath since risen to 70001. or 80001., which is at least a sixfold improvement. After the Union, to prevent this thieving Trade, the Crown sent Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer, directed to an equal Number of English and Scotch, extending to certain Limits on each Side of the Border; and, being continued, it is therefore called the Border Commission. And these meet in their Sessions, and hang up at another Rate than the Assises; for we were told that, at one Sessions, they hanged Eighteen for not reading sicut Clerici."

"This hath made a considerable Reform," continues Roger, but the reform was accompanied by excessively sharp practice. "A violent suspicion" in these latitudes "was next to Conviction;" and he relates how that the Lord Keeper having a man brought before him on four indictments, one of which was stealing a horse from some person unknown, the only evidence being that the horse was seen grazing on the moors near the man's shiel, and no one knew who was the owner, refused to convict on such testimony. "In short, the Man escaped, much to the Regret of divers Gentlemen, who thought he deserved to be hanged; and that was enough. While the Judge, at the Trial, discoursed of the Evidence and its Defects, a Scotch Gentleman upon the Bench, who was a Border Commissioner, made a long Neck towards the Judge, and 'My Laird,' said he, 'send him to huzz, and yees neer see him mere.' '

CHAPTER VI.

The Cheerful Reception explained-The Vale of Tyne-A Happy Cottager -The Burr-The Northumbrian Shibboleth-Concerning HotspurConfluence of North and South Tyne-Pleasing Views-HexhamMarket-folk-The Moot-Hall-The Abbey Church-Prospect from the Tower-The Battlefield-The Seal and the Crypt-Dilstone Castle— A Teetotal Festival-What the Fruit-woman said-The Devil Water -The Bonny Lord-The Last Derwentwater-Corbridge-A Peel— What the Lord Keeper saw-Early Whisky-A Scrap from Akenside -Bywell, a Pretty Village-Mickley-Ovingham-Burial Place of the Bewicks-Cherryburn-A Talk in the Churchyard-The FerryPrudhoe Castle-Barons and Wolves-Scots and Appletrees-An Invitation-A Coke-burner's Cottage-His Domestic Economy-Wylam -The first Railways-A Pitman's Village-About PilgrimageGeordie Stephenson's Birthplace-A Fussy Engine-Stone-crushers— Newburn-Riverside Population-The Keel-row-Scraps of SongMetropolis of Coal.

THREE commercial travellers who arrived by the early train next morning, were much amused by the account I gave them of my adventures over our breakfast, and as much surprised. What did it mean? They could not understand. One who was going up to Allentown said there was always room enough for a score of travellers at the King's Head; another was quite sure that the Anchor's beds had not all been filled. What did it mean? The third said he could not see anything suspicious in my appearance, and we none of us could tell what it meant.

I have since heard the explanation: I was taken for a Sapper, at least in Allentown. Her Majesty's corps of Engineers, as is well known, are engaged in the

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Ordnance Survey of Northumberland; and the men have won a reputation for gallantry as well as trigonometry, and here and there an increase of population takes place in a way not recognised as lawful by the Registrar-General.

Admitting this explanation, it does not say much for Northumbrian discernment that a quiet-looking individual, not in uniform, should have been taken for a wearer of the epaulettes, and treated accordingly.

The garden of the Anchor looks into the Tyne, and across to the railway station on the left bank; and if you stand on the bridge and look up and down the stream, you see a smiling vale beautified by cultivation and foliage; no longer the wild slopes of rock and heath as we saw at Alston. And the river itself, broader and deeper than in the hills, flows along its stony bed, rippling cheerfully in reply to the salutations of the leaves.

Along this smiling vale runs the road to Hexham, now low among trees, now high over the shoulder of a hill, whence you get pleasing views of the river. The smoke of a lime-kiln and the chimney of a paper-mill on the farther bank seem to be ominous of a change; but happily we are more than a day's walk from the edge of the smoky region. About four miles on the way I turned into a lane, and with the usual result; finding that however pleasant a high-road may be, lanes are always pleasanter. In the lanes we are in closer companionship with Nature. I came to a couple of cottages tenanted by farm-labourers; and could not help admiring the well-stocked garden, where gooseberries hung in thousands on the bushes. One of the men having an "off-day" was at home nursing the baby, while the wife had gone to market at Hexham ;

and he invited me to take a turn round the garden, of which half belonged to each cottage. The abundance betokened industry and no small amount of comfort. There were currants, rhubarb, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, peas; and flowers at the end where they could be best seen from the windows. I congratulated the man on his lot, and he answered that he had nothing to complain of, could earn sixteen or eighteen shillings a week, and ate beef, mutton, or bacon every day. He did not think it right for a man as worked hard not to eat meat.

He had the Northumbrian burr in perfection, that peculiarity which stumbles so awkwardly at the r. "Yes, the baw-ies aw fine this yeaw" he said in reply to my praise of the gooseberries, meaning "the berries are fine this year." Ask a Northumbrian to say courier, and you will get a cooheous answer. "What do they burn in that kiln?" I inquired of a woman at Ovingham; and she, though meaning bricks, said "B-hicks."

66

Tupny (twopenny) awnges goin' f' a penny," used to be the cry of the girls who sold oranges in the streets at Newcastle.

Dr. Smiles in his Life of a famous Northumbrian, says that the burr is a sign of robust energy of character, wherein it seems to me he makes a mistake. Defects are hardly the result of energy. Comparatively isolated from the rest of the kingdom, the Northumbrians got into a slovenly habit of using their rugged speech, and so an accident became hereditary. They would be isolated, whether or not; and baffled even William the Norman. He had to leave Northumberland out of Domesday Book.

A Londoner knows that by some a touch of the burr

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is regarded as an aristocratic distinction; and this is no new vanity, as we learn from Shakespeare, where the Lady Percy, magnifying Hotspur's memory in presence of the Earl, says

"by his light

Did all the chivalry of England move
To do brave acts; he was, indeed, the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
He had no legs that practised not his gait :

And speaking thick, which Nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant."

Between tangled hedgerows gay with wild roses, the lane descends steeply to the river, and you find pleasant walking along the bank, past West Boat Suspension-bridge-one of Captain Brown's achievements -to fields and meadows beyond. The river makes a bend here, and I had to cross a few acres of turnips to get to the point where the South and North Tyne meet together in one broad stream. It is a wild spot; a rough sandy bank, where coarse grass, gorse, thrift, and harebells intermingle at pleasure with scrubby alders, fronted by a sandy shingly slope, the dry margin of the river-bed not unlike a sea-beach. Looking the long reach of North Tyne, you see a vista of sparkling ripples, bordered by woods that clothe the base of Warden Hill, on one side, and an obtrusive brick yard on the other; and the blue summits of lofty fells far in the distance; and from those fells, fraught with tales and traditions of the Border land, comes the river, to mingle with the stream which brings memorable suggestions of the hills of Durham and Cumberland, and thus enriched, away flows the united Tyne some thirty miles farther to the sea.

Half a mile onward, and there is the bridge by which the Border Counties Railway crosses the river; a single