with a fine park. The Colne runs through the grounds, or
rather creeps through them.

"For the Colne
Is black and swollen,
Snake-like, he winds his way,
Unlike the burns
From Highland urns
That dance by crag and brae."

Borthwick-brae[218] came to dinner from town, and we had a very pleasant
evening. My excellent old friend reminded me of the old and bitter feud
between the Scotts and the Haliburtons, and observed it was curious I
should have united the blood of two hostile clans.

_May_ 28.--We took leave of our kind old host after breakfast, and set
out for our own land. Our elegant researches carried us out of the
high-road and through a labyrinth of intricate lanes,--which seem made
on purpose to afford strangers the full benefit of a dark night and a
drunk driver,--in order to visit Gill's Hill, famous for the murder of
Mr. Weare.

The place has the strongest title to the description of Wordsworth:--

"A merry spot, 'tis said, in days of yore,
But something ails it now--- the place is cursed."

The principal part of the house has been destroyed, and only the kitchen
remains standing. The garden has been dismantled, though a few laurels
and garden shrubs, run wild, continue to mark the spot. The fatal pond
is now only a green swamp, but so near the house that one cannot
conceive how it was ever chosen as a place of temporary concealment of
the murdered body. Indeed the whole history of the murder, and the
scenes which ensued, are strange pictures of desperate and short-sighted
wickedness. The feasting--the singing--the murderer with his hands
still bloody hanging round the neck of one of the females--the
watch-chain of the murdered man, argue the utmost apathy. Even Probert,
the most frightened of the party, fled no further for relief than to the
brandy bottle, and is found in the very lane, and at the spot of the
murder, seeking for the murderous weapon, and exposing himself to the
view of the passengers. Another singular mark of stupid audacity was
their venturing to wear the clothes of their victim. There was a want of
foresight in the whole arrangement of the deed, and the attempts to
conceal it, which argued strange inconsideration, which a professed
robber would not have exhibited. There was just one single shade of
redeeming character about a business so brutal, perpetrated by men above
the very lowest rank of life--it was the mixture of revenge which
afforded som