h thought not. He vowed that he would neither lose his
Isabella nor his salmon; and, as fate would have it, the old Mayor had
heard the vow, and vowed also that young Patrick should lose both.

Having fished one day to no purpose, in consequence of the obstruction of
"that most accursed of all dam-dikes, the Newmilne dike," as Patrick styled
it, he threw down his rod, and lay down upon the bank of the river, to wait
the hour when the moon should summon and lighten him to the loop-hole in
the other of his hated obstructions, the walls of Berwick--where that
evening he expected to meet his beloved Isabella, and commune with her in
the eloquent language of their mutual passion. The bright luminary burst in
the midst of his reveries from behind an autumn cloud, and flashed a long
silver beam upon the rolling waters. He started to his feet.

"It is beyond my time," he said, self-accusingly. "My Isabella is on
Berwick Wall, and I am still lingering here by the banks of the river,
three miles from where my love and honour require me to be. The loiterer in
love is a laggard in war; and shame on the Hume who is either!"

In a short time the young Hume was standing beneath a buttress of the old
walls of the town, looking earnestly through a small opening, in which he
expected to see the face of the fair daughter of the Mayor.

"Art there at last, love?" said he, in a soft voice, as he saw, with
palpitating heart, the pretty but arch face of the bewitching heiress of
all the wealth of the old burgher lord peering through the aperture. "What,
in the name of him who got his wings in the lap of Venus, and useth them to
this hour as cleverly as doth our pretty messenger of Spring, hath kept
thee, wench?"

"Ha! ha! hush! hush, man!" responded she, whose spirit equalled that of the
boldest Hume that ever headed a raid. "Thou'rt the laggard. I've waited for
thee an hour, until I've sighed this little love-hole into an oven-heat,
waiting thee, thou lover of broken troth! Some gipsy queen in Haugh of the
Tweed hath wooed thee out of thy affection for thy Isabel; and now thou
askest what hath kept me. Ha! ha! Good--for a Hume."

"The moon cheated me, and went skulking under a cloud," responded Hume.

"And the cloud threw thy love in the shade," added quickly the gay girl.
"Methought love kept his own dial, and was independent of sun or moon. What
if a rebel vapour cometh over the queen of heaven that night thou art to
make me free? My