ts were practised as the
amusement of the few intervals of truce which suspended the exercise of
war. The inveteracy of this custom may be inferred from the following
incident:--

Bernard Gilpin, the apostle of the north, the first who undertook to
preach the Protestant doctrines to the Border dalesmen, was surprised,
on entering one of their churches, to see a gauntlet or mail-glove
hanging above the altar. Upon inquiring; the meaning of a symbol so
indecorous being displayed in that sacred place, he was informed by the
clerk that the glove was that of a famous swordsman, who hung it there
as an emblem of a general challenge and gage of battle to any who should
dare to take the fatal token down. "Reach it to me," said the reverend
churchman. The clerk and the sexton equally declined the perilous
office, and the good Bernard Gilpin was obliged to remove the glove with
his own hands, desiring those who were present to inform the champion
that he, and no other, had possessed himself of the gage of defiance.
But the champion was as much ashamed to face Bernard Gilpin as the
officials of the church had been to displace his pledge of combat.

The date of the following story is about the latter years of Queen
Elizabeth's reign; and the events took place in Liddesdale, a hilly and
pastoral district of Roxburghshire, which, on a part of its boundary, is
divided from England only by a small river.

During the good old times of RUGGING AND RIVING--that is, tugging and
tearing--under which term the disorderly doings of the warlike age are
affectionately remembered, this valley was principally cultivated by the
sept or clan of the Armstrongs. The chief of this warlike race was
the Laird of Mangerton. At the period of which I speak, the estate of
Mangerton, with the power and dignity of chief, was possessed by John
Armstrong, a man of great size, strength, and courage. While his father
was alive, he was distinguished from others of his clan who bore the
same name, by the epithet of the LAIRD'S JOCK--that is to say, the
Laird's son Jock, or Jack. This name he distinguished by so many bold
and desperate achievements, that he retained it even after his father's
death, and is mentioned under it both in authentic records and in
tradition. Some of his feats are recorded in the minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border, and others are mentioned in contemporary chronicles.

At the species of singular combat which we have described the Laird's
J