was wrong. At any rate,
there was a flaw, and that was sufficient to upset the whole thing, for
the chain, not being made by a smith of kind, was of course not of the
true temper. Hence, just when success was about to crown their efforts,
the horses made a violent plunge forward--and the chain parted at a
weak link! No further attempts to ascertain the exact bearings of that
box have ever been successful. It is, as of old, at the bottom of the
lough--at least so says tradition.

And Sewingshields Castle is now no longer a castle; its very vaults and
its walls have disappeared.

"No towers are seen
On the wild heath, but those that Fancy builds,
And save a fosse that tracks the moor with green,
Is nought remains to tell of what may there have been."

THE KIDNAPPING OF LORD DURIE

"It is commonly reported that some party, in a considerable action
before the Session, finding that Lord Durie could not be persuaded to
think his plea good, fell upon a stratagem to prevent the influence and
weight which his lordship might have to his prejudice, by causing some
strong masked men to kidnap him, in the Links of Leith, at his diversion
on a Saturday afternoon, and transport him to some blind and obscure
room in the country, where he was detained captive, without the benefit
of daylight, a matter of three months (though otherwise civilly and well
entertained); during which time his lady and children went in mourning
for him as dead. But after the cause aforesaid was decided, the Lord
Durie was carried back by incognitos, and dropt in the same place where
he had been taken up." (Forbes's _Journal of the Session_, Edinburgh,
1714.)

With the early part of the seventeenth century, moss-trooping in the
Border country had not yet come to an end. Its glory, no doubt, and its
glamour, had begun to fade before even the sixteenth century was far
spent, and where were now to be found heroes such as the far-famed
Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie? Yet, as a few stout-hearted leaves,
defiant of autumn's fury, will cling to the uttermost branches of a
forest tree, so, in spite of King or Court, there were even now some
reckless souls, scornful of new-fangled modern ways and more than
content to follow in the footsteps of their grandsires, who still held
fast to precept and practice of what seemed to them "the good old days."
It is true their reiving partook now somewhat more of the nature of