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After drinking and putting the glass down on the table, I was drying my long moustache with my handkerchief, and looking at the lassie thoughtfully -I trust not admiringly.

“Ah, sir,” she said, nodding her head and smiling, "ye need na be wiping your mouth; you're no goin' to get a kiss from me."

But near Tweedmouth, in the fields of oats and wheat, we came upon whole gangs of girls cutting down thistles. Each was armed with a kind of reaping-hook at the end of a pole. Very picturesque they looked at a distance in their short dresses of green, grey, pink, or blue. But the remarkable thing about them was this. They all wore bonnets with an immense flap behind, and in front a wonderful contrivance called "an ugly"-a sunshade which quite protected even their noses. And this was not all, for they had the whole of the jaws, chin, and cheeks tied up with immense handkerchiefs, just as the jaws of the dead are sometimes bound up.

I could not make it out. Riding on with my tricycle some distance ahead of the Wanderer, I came upon a gang of them-twenty-one in all-having a noontide rest, sitting and reclining on the flowery sward.

I could not help stopping to look at them. From the little I could see of their faces some were really pretty. But all these "thistle lassies" had their "uglies" on and their jaws tied up.

I stopped and looked, and I could no more help making the following remark than a lark can help singing.

"By everything that's mysterious," I said, "why

have you got your jaws tied up? You're not dead, and you can't all have the toothache."

I shall never forget as long as I live the chorus of laughing, the shrieks of laughter, that greeted this innocent little speech of mine. They did laugh, to be sure, and laughed and laughed, and punched each other with open palms, and laughed again, and some had to lie down and roll and laugh. Oh! you just start a Northumbrian lassie laughing, and she will keep it up for a time, I can tell you.

But at last a young thing of maybe sweet seventeen let the handkerchief down-drop from her face, detached herself from the squad, and came towards me.

She put one little hand on the tricycle wheel, and looked into my face with a pair of eyes as blue and liquid as the sea out yonder.

"We tie our chins up," she said, "to keep the sun off.”

"Oh-h-h!" I said; "and to save your beauty." She nodded, and I rode on.

But in speaking of my adventure with the thistle lassies to a man in Berwick-"Yes," he said, "and those girls on a Sunday come out dressed like

ladies in silks and satins."

I remember that our first blink o' bonnie Scotland was from the hill above Tweedmouth. And yonder below us lay Berwick, with its tall, tapering spires and vermilion-roofed houses. Away to the left, far as eye could reach, sleeping in the sunlight, was the broad and smiling valley of the Tweed. The sea to the right was bright blue in some places, and a slaty

grey where cloud shadows fell. It was dotted with. many a white sail, with here and there a steamboat, with a wreath of dark smoke, fathoms long, trailing behind it.

Berwick-on-Tweed, I have been told more than once, belongs neither to Scotland nor to England. It is neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. It is a county by itself. My royal mistress ought therefore to be called Queen of Great Britain, Berwick, and Ireland. But I will have it thus: Berwick is part and parcel of Scotland. Tell me not of English laws being in force in the pretty town; I maintain that the silvery Tweed is the natural dividing line 'twixt England and the land of mountain and flood.

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"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land;

Whose heart has ne'er within him burned
As home his weary footsteps. turned

From wandering on a foreign strand?"

HESE lines naturally rang through my mind as I rode on my cycle over the old bridge of Tweed. The caravan was a long way behind, so after getting fairly into Berwick I turned and recrossed the bridge, and when I met the Wanderer I gave the tricycle up to Foley, my worthy valet and secretary, for I knew that he too wanted to be able to say in future that he had ridden into Scotland.

Yes, the above lines kept ringing through my mind, but those in the same stirring poem that follow I could not truthfully recite as yet

"Oh! Caledonia, stern and wild,

Nurse meet for a poetic child;

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,"

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because round Berwick the scenery is not stern and wild, and though there may be roaring floods, the mountains hold pretty far aloof.

Through narrow archways, and up the long, steep streets of this border town, toiled the Wanderer. We called at the post office and got letters, and went on again, seeking in vain for a place of rest. We were nearly out of the town, when, on stopping for a few minutes to breathe the horses, I was accosted by a gentleman, and told him my wants.

Ten minutes afterwards the great caravan lay comfortably in a pork-curer's yard, and the horses were knee-deep in straw in a neighbouring stable.

A German it is who owns the place. Taking an afternoon walk through his premises, I was quite astonished at the amount of cleanliness everywhere displayed. Those pigs are positively lapped in luxury ; of all sorts and sizes are they, of all ages, of all colours, and of all breeds, from the long-snouted Berkshire to the pug-nosed Yorker, huddled together in every attitude of innocence. Here are two lying in each other's arms, so to speak, but head and tail They are two strides long, and sound asleep, only dreaming, and grunting and kicking a little in their dreams. I wonder what pigs do dream about? Green fields, perhaps, hazel copses, and falling nuts and The owner of this property came in, late in the evening, and we had a pleasant chat for half an hour. About pigs? Yes, about pigs principally— pigs and politics.

acorns.

Probably no town in the three kingdoms has a

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