ey--the Armstrong Bridge, the Armstrong
College, and the Bishopric Endowment Fund.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CHEVIOTS.

From the crowded, bustling scenes of Tyneside to the solitude of the
Cheviot Hills is a "far cry," even farther mentally than in actual tale
of miles. Yet the two are linked by the same stream, which begins life
as a brawling Cheviot burn, having for its fellows the head waters of
the Rede, the Coquet, and the Till, with the scores of little dancing
rills that feed them.

Nowhere in this land of swelling hills and grassy fields can one get out
of either sight or sound of running water. Every little dip in the hills
has its watercourse, every vale its broader stream, and the pleasant
sound of their murmurings and sweet babbling fills in the background of
every remembrance of days spent upon the green slopes of the Cheviots.
You may hear in their tones, if you listen, the shrill chatter and
laughter of children, soft cooing voices, and the deeper notes of
manhood, and might fancy, did not your sight contradict the fact, that
you were close to a goodly company, whose words met your ear, but whose
magic language you could not understand.

One little burn of my acquaintance, which runs through field and dell to
join the Till, I have hearkened to again and again for hours, unable to
break away from the spell of its ever-varying, yet constant music--a
sort of wilder, sweeter version of Mendelssohn's Duetto, with the voices
of Knight and Lady alternating and intermingling amidst a rippling
current of clear bell-like undertones.

Down from Cheviot itself, the lovely little Colledge Water splashes its
way, issuing from the wild ravine called the Henhole, where the cliffs
on each side of the rocky gorge rise in some places to a height of more
than two hundred feet. Concerning this ravine, there is a legend that a
party of hunters, long ages ago, were deer-stalking in Cheviot Forest,
when on reaching the Henhole their ears were greeted by the most
ravishing music they had ever heard. Allured by the enchanting sounds,
they followed the music into the ravine, where they disappeared, and
were never again seen.

The range of the Cheviot Hills stretches for about twenty-two miles
along the north-west border of Northumberland; and as the width of the
range is, roughly speaking, twenty-one miles, we have a tract of over
three hundred square miles of rolling, grassy, and heath-clad hills, of
which about one-third