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He had therefore threatened to pull it down, to let up the fish; and sounded his threat in the ears of the indignant Mayor, in terms that were, peradventure, made stronger and bitterer by the thought that dikes and walls were his greatest bane upon earth: by the walls of Berwick the Mayor kept from his arms the fair Isabella, and by the dam-dike of Newmilne the same Mayor deprived him of the pleasure of angling.
As he went along, his eye fell upon that source of so much contention between the men of Berwick and the border barons, the dam-dike of the Newmilne, and against which the Lord Hume, as well as himself and many of the neighbouring knights and lairds, had vowed destruction.
Then is he dead as my grandmother, and no more shall he follow after my betrothed, or threaten thee with the downfall of the Newmilne dam-dike. All I sorrow for is my good sword, which, but for that accursed loop, I might have redrawn from his vile carcass, and thus saved my property at the same time that I gave the carrion crows of old Berwick a dinner."
The origin of this hatred had some connection with an affair of the Newmilne, belonging to Berwick; the dam-dike of which, Patrick alleged, prevented the salmon from getting up the river, and hence destroyed all his angling sport, as well as that of all the noblemen and gentlemen that resorted to the river for the purpose of practising the "gentle art."
"This soundeth differently from the playful hammer of thy wit, Bell. What day is fixed? Thou hast fired me with high purposes." "How high tower they?" cried the maiden, laughing. "Do they reach thy former threat, to pull down the Newmilne dam-dike, and let up the salmon, in revenge for the letting down of the Mayor's daughter?"
Mary's, whose towers and pinnacles were scarce yet touched by the newly-risen sun, so deeply the edifice lies shrouded under the mountains which rise to the southward. Turning to the left, the knight continued his road down to the northern bank of the river, until they arrived nearly opposite to the weir, or dam-dike, where Father Philip concluded his extraordinary aquatic excursion.
The brook, restrained at the ultimate boundary of the grounds by a natural dam-dike or ledge of rocks, seemed, even in its present swollen state, scarcely to glide along: and the pale willow-trees, dropping their long branches into the stream, gathered around them little coronals of the foam that floated down from the more rapid stream above.
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