e those in a theatre, before I could
distinctly observe its different parts, or convince myself that what I
saw was real."

Even as he remembered so vividly the tales the old men and women had
told him when he was a very little boy, the stories of his grandmother,
of border warfare, of heroes of Scotland, such as Watt of Harden, and
Wight Willie of Aikwood, merrymen much like Robin Hood and Little John,
and as he remembered the romances he and his friend had read in the
hills, so he was now treasuring up wild bits of scenery with all the
ardor of a poet or a painter. He was growing to know Scotland as no
other man had ever known it.

The boy Walter had little knowledge then of the great use to which he
was later to put his love of Scottish history; he expected to be a
lawyer and was studying to that end, but all his spare moments were
spent in hunting legends of his land. He became eager to visit the then
wild and inaccessible region of Liddesdale, so that he might see the
ruins of the famous castle of the Hermitage, and try to pick up some of
the ancient "riding ballads" as they were called, songs which were said
to be still preserved among the descendants of the old moss-troopers,
who had followed the banners of the House of Douglass, when they were
lords of that remote castle.

He found a man who knew that rugged country well, and for seven
successive years Walter Scott made a "raid," as he called it, into that
country, following each stream to its source, and studying every ruined
tower or castle from foundation stone to topmost battlement.

There were no inns in the whole district. The explorers had to stop over
night at any chance shepherd's hut or farmer's cottage, but everywhere
they met with open welcome, and from each home they gathered songs and
stories, and sometimes relics of border wars to take back with them to
Edinburgh. Even then the youth had little notion of what he should do
with all the facts he was gathering. The friend he traveled with said
later, "Walter was makin' himself a' the time, but he didna ken maybe
what he was about till years had passed. At first he thought o' little,
I dare say, but the queerness and the fun."

* * * * *

In course of time Scott was called to the bar as a lawyer, and took his
place with the dozens of young men who hung about the Parliament House
in Edinburgh waiting for briefs of cases to be argued. There were lots
of debating clu