For nearly
nine months every year she was absent from her clay-built hovel, and
none knew whither she wandered.

It is necessary, however, for the development of our story, that we
here make further mention of her husband and her sons. The elder Moor
had been a daring freebooter in his youth; and often in the morning, and
even at dead of night, the "fray of support," the cry for help, and the
sudden summons for neighbours and kinsmen to rise and ride, were raised
wheresoever he trode; and the sleuth-hounds were let loose upon his
track. It was his boast that he dared to ride farther to humble an enemy
than any other reiver on either side of the Border. If he saw, or if he
heard, of a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep to his liking, he
immediately "marked it for his own," and seldom failed in securing it;
and though the property so obtained was not purchased with money, it was
often procured with a part of his own blood--and with the blood, and not
unfrequently the lives, of his friends, followers, and relatives. And
when law and justice became stronger than the reiver's right, they by no
means tamed his spirit. Though necessity, then, compelled him to be a
buyer and seller of cattle, he looked upon the occupation and the
necessity as a disgrace, and he sighed for the honoured and happier days
of his youth, when the freebooter's might was the freebooter's right.
His sons were young men deeply imbued with his spirit; and it was their
chiefest pleasure, during the long winter evenings, to sit and listen to
him, while he recorded the exploits and the hairbreadth escapes of his
early days. He frequently related to them strange adventures and
contests which he had in his youth with one Walter Cunningham, who
resided near Simprin, in Berwickshire, and who was not only regarded as
a wealthy man, but as one of the boldest on the Borders. He had often
boasted of the number of his herds, and defied the stoutest heart in
Northumberland to lay hand upon their horns. The elder Moor had heard
this defiance, and being resolved to prove that he had both a hand and a
heart to put the defiance to the test, the following is one of the
adventures which he related to his sons in connection therewith:--

"It was about the Martinmas," he said, "when the leaves were becoming
few and blighted on the trees; I was courting your mother at the time,
and her faither had consented to our marriage; but, at the same time, he
half cast up to me, that I