on the Borders even at that period. The barony
either gave its name to, or took its name from, a well-known
Northumbrian family, of which one of the most prominent members was that
Sir John de Coupland who succeeded in capturing David of Scotland at the
battle of Neville's Cross--not, however, before he had lost some of his
teeth by a blow from the mailed fist of that doughty monarch!

Beyond Coupland Castle we look across Milfield Plain lying in the angle
formed by the meeting of the Glen with the deep and sullen Till, whose
slow windings can be traced as it gleams at intervals between the
undulations of the lower hills through which it flows northwestward to
the Tweed. Though a brisk and sparkling stream in certain parts of its
course, the general characteristics of the Till are well borne out by
the lines--

Tweed says to Till
"What gars ye rin sae still?"
Till says to Tweed
"Though ye rin wi' speed
And I rin slaw;
Where ye droon ae man
I droon twa."

There is yet more of historical and traditional interest to note in this
view from the top of Yeavering Bell, which, as I saw it last, lay warm
in the glow of a September afternoon. Nennius is our authority for
stating that on Milfield Plain took place one of the great conflicts in
which King Arthur

"Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame
The heathen hordes, and made a realm, and reigned"

And, as we gazed, the level spaces seemed peopled once more with
charging knights, flashing sword and swinging battle-axe, and the
intervening centuries dropped away, and Arthur's call to battle for "our
fair father Christ," seemed curiously befitting that romantic scene.
But, as the shadows lengthened, and the streams took on a golden glow in
the rays of the September sun, then slowly setting, "the tumult and the
shouting of the captains" died away, and the figure of an earnest monk
seemed to stand by the riverside, with prince and serf, peasant and
warrior for his audience, and the cold bright waters of the Glen
dripping from his hand, as he enrolled one after another into the ranks
of an army mightier than the hosts of Arthur or Edwin.

Milfield again emerges into notice out of the obscurity of those dark
ages, in the days of the Bernician kings who succeeded Edwin; for Bede
tells us that "This town (Ad-gefrin) under the following kings, was
abandoned, and another was built instead of it at a place called
Melmin," now Milfield. Nothing, howev