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A little more than half a century ago, but yet at a period not so far distant as to be beyond the remembrance of many still living, a clear-headed North-countryman, on the banks of the Tyne, was working out, in spite of all opposition, the great problem of adapting the steam engine to railway locomotion.
Close on two hundred years back from the present time there stood far up the South Tyne, beyond Haltwhistle, on the road then little better than a bridle-track running over the Cumberland border by Brampton, an inn which in those days was a house of no little importance in that wild and remote country.
It is known in history as the Wall of Severus; and so solid, substantial, and permanent was the work, that the traces of it have not entirely disappeared to the present day. The wall extended across the island, from the mouth of the Tyne, on the German Ocean, to the Solway Frith nearly seventy miles. It was twelve feet high, and eight feet wide.
Then first she saw that her master had reentered. Wiping her eyes hurriedly, she turned to him with a pitiful, apologetic smile. "Dinna be sair vext wi' me, sir: I canna help bein glaid that I had him, and to tyne him has gien me an unco sair hert!" She stopped, terrified: how much had he heard? she could not tell what she might not have said!
Those centuries had also seen the building of the wall of Hadrian between the Tyne and Solway in the year 120, the campaigns of Lollius Urbicus in 140 A.D. and the erection between the Firths of Forth and Clyde of the earthen rampart of Antonine on stone foundations, which was held by Rome for about fifty years.
The inhabitants of the city who were not killed were sold as slaves. In Britain a most competent officer Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus was made governor in A.D. 78. He conquered the country as far north as the Tyne and the Solway, and built a line of forts across the isthmus between England and Scotland.
After stopping to open the railway bridges, triumphs of engineering, over the Tyne and the Tweed, the travellers reached Edinburgh, where, to the gratification of an immense gathering of her Scotch subjects, her Majesty spent her first night in Holyrood, the palace of her Stewart ancestors.
The oars were double-manned, but nothing would avail; and all the time the cry of the men on the wrecked vessel sounded through the storming of the gale. At last one man said, "Let's have the old 'Tyne." The "Tyne" is a superannuated lifeboat which is kept under lock and key. The key was refused, and the men who demanded it were implored not to tempt Providence.
I half believe you came here with the deliberate purpose of avenging your friend, and that you are keeping for his inspection a diary in which the poor girl's humiliation to-day will form the hateful climax." They did not dream that the one most interested was near. Miss Van Tyne had felt too faint and sorely wounded to go further without rest.
The site of the New Castle, on a part of the river bank which slopes steeply down to the Tyne, had been occupied centuries before by a Roman fort, constructed by order of the Emperor Hadrian, who visited Britain A.D. 120. This became the second station on the Great Wall erected by Hadrian's orders along the line of forts which Agricola had raised forty years before.
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