he incoming 'bore' Maxwell saw with
dismay the 'white horses of Solway' shaking their manes.

Darkness lowered about them; then a jagged flash of lightning rent the
murky air, and Sandie as he wrestled with the tiller saw a face white as
foam and 'unco ghash' beside him.

'Hae ye onything on your conscience, Laird?' cried Sandie in his ear,
'ony bit adultery or murder? If ye hae, mak a vow instantly to St.
Nicholas, or we're lost.'

Maxwell made no reply, but groaned as he looked wildly through the
storm.

Twelve forms--well kent to him--did he not see them pointing their
accusing fingers against him? There was Ian--there Alastair, next
Hamilton--he could look no further. _God in Heaven! Wharton had hung his
pledges._

Maxwell sank backwards, his hands to his eyes.

'Mak the vow, Laird,' yelled Sandie again in his ear, desperately.

'I'll mak a vow to Saint Nicholas,' murmured the other brokenly, 'to
build a tower to his honour, and put a light into it nightly for all
poor sailors on Solway.'

Heartened by this, Sandie thrust all his strength upon the tiller and
kept the lugger straight 'twixt Scylla and Charybdis.

But 'the white horses' were now upon them, their streaming manes
enveloping the gunwale, and Maxwell gave himself up for lost. The lugger
shivered, then grated violently. 'What's yon?' he cried in terror.

'Yon's the first stone o' Repentance Tower,'[1] cried Sandie
triumphantly, as he drave the lugger high upon the beach.

[Footnote 1: Tradition commonly holds that the builder of the tower had
thrown his captives overboard to lighten the boat, when returning from a
raid into England; but if the writer remembers aright, Dr. Nielson in
one of his erudite articles, seemed able to prove that Sir Robert
Maxwell--who married the Herries heiress and became Lord Herries--was
the builder. In this case the above tale gives the truer version of the
tower's origin.]

THE LORD WARDEN'S TOMB

My companion had surprised me by a sudden change of demeanour, for which
I could not account, and I was watching him out of the tail of my eye
from behind a pillar in the nave of the church which we were exploring.
We had just been viewing the recumbent figure of a famous Lord Warden of
the western English march, that lay on a raised tomb in the north
transept, and after I had blazoned the coat of arms and admired the
dignity of the carving, I passed on into the nave, but my companion had
not followed me.