ative Border
dourness that had caused him to stick to it; but at any rate he did
stick to it--though, like most sailors, he growled, and even swore
sometimes, that he hated the life. And now, in the winter of 1784-5,
here he was in Kelso, stout, weather-beaten, grey-headed, over fifty,
living within earshot of the deep voice of flooded Tweed roaring and
fretting over the barrier with which the devil, at bidding of Michael
Scott the Wizard, long syne dammed its course. Many a time when the
captain's little vessel, close hauled, had been threshing through
leaden-grey seas under hurrying, leaden-grey skies and bitter snow
squalls, with a foul wind persistently pounding at her day after day, he
had thought, as some more than ordinarily angry puff whitened the water
to windward and broke him off his course, with the weather leech of his
close-reefed topsail shivering, how pleasant it must be to be a
landsman, to go where he pleased in spite of wind or weather. Ah! they
were the happy ones, those lucky landsmen, who could always do as they
chose, blow high, blow low.

Well, here he was at last, drinking in all a landsman's pleasures,
enjoying his privileges--and not too old yet, he told himself with
self-conscious chuckle, to raise a pleasant flutter of expectation in
the hearts of Kelso's widows and maidens. Not that he was a marrying
man, he would sometimes protest; far from it, indeed. Yet they did say
that the landlord of a rival inn was heard to remark that "the cauptain
gaed ower aften to Lucky G----'s howf. It wasna hardlys decent, an' her
man no deid a twalmonth." Maybe, however, the good widow's brand of
whisky was more grateful to the captain's palate, or the company
assembled in her snug parlour lightsomer, or at least less dour, than
was to be found at the rival inn, where the landlord was an elder of the
kirk and most stern opponent of all lightness and frivolity. Whatever
the cause, however, it is certain that the captain did acquire the habit
of dropping in very frequently at the widow's, where he was always a
welcome guest. And it was from a merry evening there that, with a
"tumbler" or two inside his ample waistcoat, he set out for home one
black February night when a gusty wind drove thin sleety rain rattling
against the window panes of the quiet little town, and emptied the
silent, moss-grown streets very effectively.

An hour or two later, it might be, two men, Adam Hislop and William
Wallace, were noisi