most wonderful discovery that had been made since the days of Thomas the Rhymer, and the subterranean Palace beneath the triple Eildons. (To be continued.)

Minstrel, Branksome Tower, Sir William of Deloraine, the famous moonlight ride to Melrose, and the wondrous scene at the grave of Michael Scott, the wizard.

Fond of horse-back exercise from my early boyhood, my imagination was so stirred by the moonlight ride that I resolved to repeat the adventure in my own person. Having been much about the manse, I picked up acquaintance not so much with the minister as with the minister's pony. She was an affectionate creature of domestic tastes, but always ready for a bit of adventure when she found a congenial spirit to share it with her and

Probably this fancy may have been nourished by the reading of Sir Walter's great Border poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, of which I was passionately fond when a boy. Strolling about the Market Place of Melrose one day during the school dinner-hour, the companion who was with me drew my attention to a placard in a bookseller's window announcing a new and cheap edition of The Lay, at the tempting price of sixpence.

"The Lay of the Last Minstrel for sixpence !" exclaimed my companion. "Let's have a copy." With plenty of pocket-money, he generously purchased two copies, and made me a present of one. Making our way to the old cross at the head of the Market Place, we sat down on one of the steps and there formed our first acquaintance with the aged

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take her through it. I mentioned the matter of the proposed ride to her, and she entered most heartily into the adventure. Accordingly we arranged to start from Melrose some afternoon when the moon would be at the full that night, ride over to Branksome, and return to Melrose in the moonlight and by the same route as had been taken by Deloraine.

But the best-laid schemes of mice and men-of boys and ponies-gang aft agley. The minister went away from home before the moonlight came, and as he was to be absent some weeks, and unable to take his pony with him, she was lent to a medical man instead of idling away her time and eating her head off in the manse stable.

By and bye the minister returned home, and when all was comfortably settled in the manse, I, as the

minister's envoy, was commissioned one afternoon to proceed to the residence of the doctor, four miles away, and bring home the pony. On arriving at the doctor's, the envoy found that he was absent on a distant professional visit, and that he was not expected back till about nine o'clock that evening.

It was in the depth of winter when this incident took place; the frost was keen, the roads were hard as iron, and the stars--the envoy never remembered of seeing such a night of stars before. They seemed hanging like lamps out of heaven; clear, twinkling, and marvellously beautiful. But the envoy could not stand and gaze at the stars till the doctor's return; five minutes were long enough on such a night of intense cold and frost. The doctor was a bachelor, so there was neither wife nor mother to welcome the young envoy and treat him as the representative of the minister. He was

the fascination was so intense, and the interest so absorbing, that the stable boy was invited to begin again. What might have happened had the stories gone on much longer will never be known. Fortunately, all speculation on that point was terminated by the return of the doctor.

In his innocence, the envoy jumped up and imagined that he would get home now. But he was doomed to bitter disappointment, for the pony was in a dreadful state of heat, and steaming at the stable door like a limekiln. Before she was able to return home she would require to be thoroughly rubbed down, get a warm mash for supper, and a rest of an hour at least.

She too was anxious to get home, for the sight o her young friend awoke all her memories of the manse and the minister. "The minister!" she exclaimed. "I aye thocht he was a hard rider, but

taken to the kitchen, however, stuffed with a good tea, and treated afterwards to a rehearsal of some of the most blood-curdling stories that he had ever before been privileged to hear. They unsetttled all his tea, and stirred the bulb of every hair on his head, for the doctor's two servant maids crept round the kitchen fire; and as they knitted away at their "rig and fur" stockings, they got the stable-boy to read aloud to them, and what he read was page after page of the Newgate Calendar!

The envoy wanted out, on pretence of looking at the stars, but both the maids detained him on the plea that he would get his "death o' cauld on sic a nicht," and on the additional and still more forciblyurged plea that they wanted "as mony men folk in the kitchen as possible." It was easy to see that the Newgate Calendar was beginning to unsettle them, too, and render them uneasy. Nevertheless,

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he's an innocent bairn alongside o' this deevil o' a doctor."

There was nothing for it but patience on the part both of envoy and of pony; so the latter went into supper, and the former returned to the kitchen, when the Calendar was laid aside, and busy were the maids in getting the doctor's late dinner ready. When that was set, the doctor failed in his duty by neglecting to invite the minister's envoy to share his dinner with him; but the maids saw to that and regaled him with "tatties an' herrin'," washed down with home-made table-beer called "treacle wheuch."

By and bye, the stable-boy returned to the kitchen, leaving the pony to enjoy her supper after a thorough rub-down. The doctor, too, was enjoying his rest after a hard day's riding, so that his domestics sat down to supper of the same nature as that over which the envoy was still busy. He was saying

nothing, for his thoughts were on the midnight ride that was before him-through the dreaded pass of the Bogle Burn and over the shoulder of the haunted Eildons. Supper ended, he suggested he would like to see the stars, but the stable-boy advised him to remain for half-an-hour longer, as the pony was needing all the rest she could get.

Over the supper in the kitchen, the stable-boy tried to edge in some comments on the Newgate Calendar, but the maids had had plenty for one night. They drifted instead into ghost stories and local legends of Burke and Hare, white wives, warlocks, witches, headless horsemen, and such like

she. "Well, we'll leave him at it. The stronger he brews it, the more likely he'll be able to drown the recollections of this day, for of a' the days that I've been out in, this is certainly the most deevilish. Jump up to your seat and we'll take the road."

She ceased, whereupon the envoy vaulted into the saddle, and giving the pony her head, away she broke-striking sparks of fire from the causewayed courtyard and regained the high road, along which she bowled with an earnestness which promised soon to annihilate the four miles' space between her and home. What a night for stars above-what a night for

literature. All this while the envoy was sitting listening, but still contributing nothing to the evening's entertainment. His patience failed him at last, however, and he rose to go to the stable. In the most energetic language of which he was capable, he declared that he must really start for home. Awed into acquiescence, the stable-boy rose and preceded the envoy to the stable, where the pony was beginning to show signs of impatience too.

As she was being prepared for the journey home and led out into the courtyard she caught the eye of the envoy. "The doctor's at his toddy," said

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action below! In her unerring knowledge of the country the pony warmed to her work, traversed the dreaded pass, climbed the shoulders of the Eildons, and reached her home at the manse without further speech or adventure of any kind. Though the projected ride to Branksome and back to Melrose in the moonlight never came off, I yet derived some consolation from the fact that, instead, I had ridden across the shoulder of the haunted Eildons beneath the stars at midnight. (To be continued.)

was eagerly lapped up by the pack of undisciplined readers who mark a transition period. The stream that sprang from the genius of Robert Louis Stevenson has attained breadth, depth, and majesty, since he travelled the Cevennes with his donkey, for the fountain teemed with fresh supplies, which made its cataracts resound, its pools deep and limpid, its reaches silvern and murmurous. But of late years, rills and brooks from other fountain heads away amongst the moors and lochs of the

Scottish border lands have swelled its quickening current; a goodly tributary has joined from "Thrums," and from over the Borders there has swirled in a flashing torrent of heroic fiction. All these have filled from bank to bank the noble river of the renaissance of the good, the true, and the beautiful, in romantic literature.

And now there comes from a borderer, known to us all, a book unique not so much of its kind as of its degree, which takes without claiming high distinction. This book, "A Monk of Fife," has come into the world so quietly, so unheralded, with such simple dignity, that we receive it at first without recognising its quality, which is that of an immortal. For its manner is not flaunting, but very quiet; its narrative does not rush forward on a torrent of confounding adventures, but moves with leisure through the escapades, the joys, the enthusiasms, and the sufferings of a brave and single-hearted hero, waxing vigorous and strenuous when it deals of battles, sieges, and deliverances, taking on a sunny iridescence of peace when its matter is of love and loyalty.

The language, purporting to be transcribed from Monkish French of the fifteenth century into educated Scots just favouring the wording of its earlier guise, has a great charm because it never oppresses the mind with a strained antiquity, but carries its rime of eld as lightly as a peach its bloom. We are too much afflicted in these days with a tongue which is neither old nor new, but is a device of those who would forget the modern degradations of the Queen's English in a dialect of the recluse and of the study. It is not wonderful that heroes and heroines are sought in centuries whose slang has evaporated, and for whom a speech may be ingeniously commingled not all in defiance of every law of literature, for what has to-day's talk to do with literature, and how are girls to be made immortal, whose favourite adjuration is "Buck up!" and whose only eulogy is "ripping?" But the Scots of "A Monk of Fife” has no headache in all its pages, and is perfect in its clear, quiet, competent, unpretending expression.

The story deals with the part taken by a Fifeshire Scot, Norman Leslie, in the battles and sieges of France during the two years of Jeanne d'Arc's glorious campaign. A quarrel at golf led to his flight from home, chance, in a measure took him to Bordeaux, whence he set out for Orleans to find his brother, not knowing that he was dead and that the city was besieged by the English. Two influences governed the time, made real and personal for the time, engaged in the never-ending conflict of good and evil, of

He

faith and unfaith. With touches that transport us to Spenser's realm of Faery, we are made cognisant of the very presence of the agents of heaven and hell in the business that was astir in France. The Maid of Orleans, whose perfect faith makes her cause invincible while she can command followers who believe and who live in the camp as in the presence of God, moves before us noble, gracious, alert, brave-her councillors, the messengers from Heaven, her wisdom, obedience to their behests. The people know that she leads to victory: a light envelopes her and baffles her detestable foe. It is not from the English that Heaven stoops to save her, but from a man who is the agent of evil, as much accredited by Hell, as she is sealed and hallowed by Heaven This man, Noiroufle, figures as a Franciscan Friar, but is a monster of iniquity and the very embodiment of unbelief. objects not to the Dauphin's cause, nor to his success, but to the Maid and to her holiness. That France may be delivered from righteousness is to him the one important aim. The battle is against the Maid herself, and she is all unconscious of her foe. His treacheries, his cruelties, his diabolic skill, a kind of dread humour that distinguishes him, his success in gulling the princes and captains, in spreading revolt against the maid's stern ordinance of cleanly living in the camp, in undermining the very safeguards of her cause, and his absolute impunity in all that he effects make up a figure grim, grotesque, and terrible. The two appear in the book pitted against each other, the maid making for righteousness and nowise knowing that the foul fiend in person seeks her life, Noiroufle bending every resource of his monstrous cunning to achieve her undoing. His one undefended point is illiteracy; he can neither read nor write; but his extraordinary skill as a marksman, as a gunner, as a worker of miraclessleight of hand tricks which he passed for miracles-his brazen self-possession and his mastery of every evil device arm him cap-a-pie for mischief. What a picture is that of the scoundrel posturing as a holy friar, when brought by the trusting Maid herself to attend Norman on what threatened to be his death-bed. "He took from his hairy neck a heavy Italian crucifix of black wood, whereon was a figure of our Lord, wrought in white enamel with golden nails, and a golden crown of thorns. Now read,' he whispered, heaving up the crucifix above me. And as he lifted it, a bright blade, strong, narrow and sharp, leaped out from beneath the feet of our Lord, and glittered within an inch of my throat. An emblem of this false friar it was, the outside of whom was as that of

a holy man, while within he was a murdering sword."

But besides the deep interest of the struggle between the Maid and the fatal unbelief which thwarted her purposes, besides the stirring tale of battles, ambuscades, and sieges, there is in "A Monk of Fife," one of the most attractive of love-stories. Elliot Hume, its heroine, the Maid's friend, the daughter of the Dauphin's painter, is fragrant as a growing cowslip in spring, as lavender in summer. She has the lovely qualities of the maidens whom men dared great things to win, and whom they cherished as their life when won. There is no tedious, hysterical make-believe about her, no levity of heart, no sickening wantonness as in the heroines of the drain and the dunghill. She is a woman and a lady, playful, sunny, shy, tender, modest, with gleams of temper and little jealousies which dissolve in generous penitence, with a deep and loyal heart, with the pure vision which sees God and knows Him wherever He is. She was first amongst women to love the Maid and to believe in her, and the two fair girls fill this book with their beauty and their goodness. The story of Norman's wooing and Elliot's shy avoidance of him, his winning because he was wounded in a duel and she betrayed her secret in an agony of pity, is idyllic. And we rejoice that they were wedded at last, and grieve that Norman's happiness lasted but a year.

We

The Maid presents a picture not less lovable and more heroic. There is no idyll in her story, but stern warrior's work, for in Heaven not Michael merely and St. George are accounted soldier-saints, but a girl in budding womanhood was chosen and invested, not for strength of arm, but because alone in France she bore the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. see her standing in the farmyard of the windmill with head bared, but wearing the rest of her armour, in her hand a dish of corn, and doves and mavises that flew about her or nestled on her shoulder and her breast, while her lips moved in prayer and besought direction from Heaven for the morrow. And we see her leading her soldiers up the scaling ladders, storming the gates, calling upon them to follow her. And alas! we see her in prison betrayed to her foes, refusing escape which menaced another's life, dying at the stake, a hero and a saint to the last.

This is not merely an unrivalled piece of history, it is a perfect story, its interest concentrated on the little group, Norman Leslie and the painter, Jeanne and Elliot, Noiroufle and a handful of Scots troopers and vagrants. The Dauphin shows at intervals, a laggard and

recreant prince, whom unbelief paralyses and degrades. What wonder that his son was Louis XI., and that France, faithless in the day of her high calling, passed under the yoke of that minion of evil?

Even elderly readers must recapture the light of other days in the monk's story, and to boys and to girls it is priceless. One would like to know that every boy on the Borders had this book to pore over, to quote, and to live through, to dream of valiance for its saint, and to despise the treachery that was her doom. Were it but rightly read and re-read, then to the Borders we might look for a generation of heroes, in whom courage, courtesy, reverence, and faith had their glad renaissance.

F

ANNA M. STODDART.

Some Recent Border Books.

PROM Selkirk and Galashiels we have a parcel of interesting Border books which merit more than a passing notice. Messrs. George Lewis & Son, of the former town, issue a new edition of Dr. Russell's Reminiscences of Yarrow, one of the most delightful works that has yet been published descriptive of life and character in that romantic region at the close of last and beginning of the present century. This new edition comes to its readers under circumstances which have quite a touch of Yarrow pathos in them for the editing and annotating of the volume was the last literary work of Professor Veitch who died a few days after he had given the finishing touch to the work. It bears the mark of the Professor's hand in the verification of dates and quotations, the revision and addition of notes, and several corrections in the construction of sentences here and there. The illustrations by Tom Scott A.R.S.A. lend additional charm to this attractive volume-a volume without which no Border library can be considered complete.

We have also another Yarrow book in its second edition-Aunt Janet's Legacy 10 her Nieces, by Janet Bathgate. The Legacy is not one of goods and gear, but a record of the common every-day events of a life begun eighty years ago in the quiet pastoral valley of the Yarrow. It is a good book in the best sense of the expression: it has the odour, sweet and pleasant, of Burns' Cottar's Saturday Night running all through it. The pious household of the Scottish peasantry long ago is drawn to the life-not the sentimental piety that leaves the trace of insincerity behind it, but the practical article that was fed and nourished on the Bible