sen'd_ (brindled) _bull_. On his return with this
gallant prey, he passed a very large haystack. It occurred to the
provident laird {p.057} that this would be extremely convenient to
fodder his new stock of cattle; but as no means of transporting it
were obvious, he was fain to take leave of it with the apostrophe, now
become proverbial--'_By my saul, had ye but four feet, ye should not
stand lang there._' In short, as Froissart says of a similar class of
feudal robbers, nothing came amiss to them that was not _too heavy or
too hot_."

Another striking chapter in the genealogical history belongs to the
marriage of Auld Wat's son and heir, afterwards Sir William Scott of
Harden, distinguished by the early favor of James VI., and severely
fined for his loyalty under the usurpation of Cromwell. The period of
this gentleman's youth was a very wild one in that district. The
Border clans still made war on each other occasionally, much in the
fashion of their forefathers; and the young and handsome heir of
Harden, engaging in a foray upon the lands of Sir Gideon Murray of
Elibank, treasurer-depute of Scotland, was overpowered by that baron's
retainers, and carried in shackles to his castle, now a heap of ruins,
on the banks of the Tweed. Elibank's "doomtree" extended its broad
arms close to the gates of his fortress, and the indignant laird was
on the point of desiring his prisoner to say a last prayer, when his
more considerate dame interposed milder counsels, suggesting that the
culprit was born to a good estate, and that they had three unmarried
daughters. Young Harden, not, it is said, without hesitation, agreed
to save his life by taking the plainest of the three off their hands,
and the contract of marriage, executed instantly on the parchment of a
drum, is still in the charter-chest of his noble representative.

Walter Scott, the third son of this couple, was the first Laird of
Raeburn, already alluded to as one of the patrons of Satchells. He
married Isabel Macdougal, daughter of Macdougal of Makerstoun--a
family of great antiquity and distinction in Roxburghshire, of whose
{p.058} blood, through various alliances, the poet had a large share
in his veins. Raeburn, though the son and brother of two steady
Cavaliers, and married into a family of the same political creed,
became a Whig, and at last a Quaker; and the reader will find, in one
of the notes to The Heart of Mid-Lothian, a singular account of the
persecution