e Tweed, if thou wert in the knowledge of
this thought that now tickles the wild fancy of thy lover, whom thou
equallest in all that belongest to the gay heart and the bounding spirit."

Occupied with these thoughts, Patrick went home to the castle of the Humes;
and, next morning, he bent his way to Foulden, where he sought Lord Ross's
baillie, James Sinclair, a man who had a very hearty spite against the
obstruction to the passage of the Tweed salmon. With him he communed for a
considerable time, and thereafter he proceeded to Paxton and to others of
the gentlemen in the vicinity. The subject of these interviews will perhaps
best be explained by the following placard, which appeared in various parts
of Berwick in two days thereafter:--

"On Friday last, the tenant of Newmilne, belonging to the toun of Baricke,
gave information to our honourable Mayor, who has communicated the same to
our gallant Governor, Captain Wallace, that the Lord Hume and other the
Scotch gentlemen, our neighbours, do, on Monday next, intend to be at the
Newmilne aforesaid, by tenn of the clock of the morninge; and that they had
summoned their tenants to be then and there present, alsoe, to assist in
the breaking downe and demolishing the dam of the said Newmilne; and that
the Lord Ross his bailiffe of Foulden had given out in speeches, that he
was desired to summon the said Lord Ross, his tenants, and inhabitants of
Foulden barronry, to be then and there aiding and assisting them, alsoe,
for better effecting the same: Whereupon, it is necessary, that, at a
ringing of a belle, our tounsmen, headed by our Mayor, and directed by the
warlike genius of Captain Wallace, should proceed to the said Newmilne, and
give battle in defence of the said dike, which is indispensable to the
existence of the toun's property. God save the Mayor!"

The effect produced by this proclamation was rapid and stirring. The
English, at that period, had contrived to raise a strong prejudice in the
minds of the Berwick burghers against the Border Scots; and the
intelligence that the daring robbers intended to demolish their property,
inflamed them to the high point of resolution to fight under their valorous
Captain, while one stone of the dike remained on another, and one drop of
blood was left in their bodies. Hume, who had a greater part in the
occasion of these preparations than had been made apparent, got secret
intelligence, on all that was going on within the town; bu