desired;" and on the 15th he addressed
to him at Rosebank a letter, in which there is this paragraph, an
undoubted autograph of Mr. Saunders Fairford, _anno aetatis_
sixty-three:--

"DEAR WALTER,--... I am glad that your expedition to the west
proved agreeable. You do well to warn your mother against
Ashestiel. Although I said little, yet I never thought that road
could be agreeable; besides, it is taking too wide a circle. Lord
Justice-Clerk is in town attending the Bills.[94] He called here
yesterday, and inquired very particularly for you. I told him
where you was, and he expects to see you at Jedburgh upon the
21st. He is to be at Mellerstain[95] on the 20th, and will be
there all night. His Lordship said, in a very pleasant manner,
that something might cast up at Jedburgh to give you an
opportunity of appearing, and that he would insist upon it,
{p.170} and that in future he meant to give you a share of the
criminal business in this Court,--all which is very kind. I told
his Lordship that I had dissuaded you from appearing at Jedburgh,
but he said I was wrong in doing so, and I therefore leave the
matter to you and him. _I think it is probable he will breakfast
with Sir H. H. MacDougall on the 21st, on his way to
Jedburgh._"...

[Footnote 94: The Judges then attended in Edinburgh in
rotation during the intervals of term, to take care of
various sorts of business which could not brook delay, bills
of injunction, etc.]

[Footnote 95: The beautiful seat of the Baillies of
Jerviswood, in Berwickshire, a few miles below Dryburgh.]

This last quiet hint, that the young lawyer might as well be at
Makerstoun (the seat of a relation) when _His Lordship_ breakfasted
there, and of course swell the train of His Lordship's little
procession into the county town, seems delightfully characteristic. I
think I hear Sir Walter himself lecturing _me_, when in the same sort
of situation, thirty years afterwards. He declined, as one of the
following letters will show, the opportunity of making his first
appearance on this occasion at Jedburgh. He was present, indeed, at
the Court during the assizes, but "durst not venture." His accounts to
William Clerk of his vacation amusements, and more particularly of his
second excursion to Northumberland, will, I am sure, interest every
reader:--