ready times.

But cases, unhappily, were not unknown in which one or other of the
tipsy combatants--in his sober moments possibly an honourable and
kindly-natured man--thrust suddenly and without warning, giving his
opponent small time to draw, or even, perhaps, to rise from his chair, a
course of action which, even under the easy moral code of those days,
was accounted as murder.

Such a case occurred at Jedburgh in the year 1726. Sir Gilbert Eliott of
Stobs and Colonel Stewart of Stewartfield (now called Hartrigge) were
the principals in the affair.

Sir Gilbert (father of the General Eliott afterwards so famed for his
defence of Gibraltar in the great siege of 1779-83) was a man who had
spent some part of his youth in London, a place then, as ever, little
calculated to repress leanings towards conviviality in young men
possessing the command of money. Probably the habits there contracted
were emphasized later, when ebbing fortune consigned him for good to
what no doubt then seemed to him the deadly dull life of a dull
country-side. More than likely, too, he was a little scornful of his
neighbours who knew not the delights of London, a trifle contemptuous of
their country manners, and possibly he may have been of quarrelsome
disposition, when in his cups quick to take offence and to see slights
where none existed. In any event, if one may judge from the evidence
given later at an inquiry held in Jedburgh, throughout the affair with
Colonel Stewart, Sir Gilbert Eliott was the aggressor. Possibly, after
the fashion of the day, both were more or less tipsy; certainly, without
any doubt, Sir Gilbert was greatly the worse of liquor, and did not
carry that liquor as a gentleman was expected to carry it. He
persistently forced a quarrel on the Colonel.

It was in the old Black Bull Inn at Jedburgh that the meeting took
place. There had been a Head Court that forenoon to determine the list
of voters for the year, and a large and already somewhat convivial
company assembled afterwards in the dining-room of the Black Bull. Wine
flowed, and as the evening waned, guest after guest prudently took
himself off, till of the original party there were left but five--Sir
Gilbert, Colonel Stewart, two officers of the Royal Regiment of North
British Dragoons (the Scots Greys), and the proprietor of
Timpendean--the latter described in the evidence as being "very noysie."

It is easy to imagine the scene. The long, low-ceilinged room