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Fortunately Jean had a spare handkerchief, and Pamela promised that on her return he should have a reel of sticking-plaster for his own use, so, battered but content, he returned to the house, Peter remaining behind to investigate a mole-heap. "What a cheery day for November," Pamela remarked as they took the road by Tweedside.
"I'll bring them down here this afternoon, and show them to you if you'll call in. But now do you think this man Phillips may have been my father?" "Well," replied Mr. Lindsey, reflectively, "it's an odd thing that Phillips, whoever he was, drew five hundred pounds in cash out of the British Linen Bank at Peebles, and carried it straight away to Tweedside where you believe your father came from.
Memory, that has lost so much and would gladly lose so much more, brings vividly back the golden summer evenings by Tweedside, when the trout began to plash in the stillness brings back the long, lounging, solitary days beneath the woods of Ashiesteil days so lonely that they sometimes, in the end, begat a superstitious eeriness.
Yet Russel of the Scotsman was perhaps the most whole-souled salmon fisher of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations extended beyond the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the peroration, slightly profane perhaps, but entirely enthusiastic, of his speech on salmon fishing at a Tweedside dinner?
"It at once struck me, as the best and wisest step for us to take, that we should put spurs into our horses, and gallop back to Tweedside; for I kenned it would be impossible for us to secure a single cow, surrounded, as we were sure to be in a few minutes, by sixty or a hundred men; and though I was no coward, I was aware that there could be but little bravery in six men attempting to give battle to sixty.
In the North British Review, No. 82, there is an extremely interesting sketch of this learned Peerage lawyer. He died in his 85th year, in 1864, at his country seat, Kirklands in Roxburghshire, which he had purchased by Sir Walter's advice. The following amusing narrative of what took place on Tweedside when these two old friends were in their prime is given in Mr. Richardson's own words:
But it's the fact that my father hailed from Tweedside and from some place not so far from Berwick." I was watching Mr. Lindsey pretty closely, being desirous of seeing how he took to Mr. Gavin Smeaton, and what he made of him, and I saw him prick his ears at this announcement; clearly, it seemed to suggest something of interest to him. "Aye?" he exclaimed.
Many of the pools have this peculiarity, and in many, one step made rashly lets you into a very uncomfortable and perilous place. Therefore expeditions to Tweedside were apt to end in a ducking. It was often hard to reach the water where trout were rising, and the rise was always capricious.
In those moorland sojournings, too, he had got light on other matters, for he had the numbers of Kenmure's levies in his head, had visited my lord Stair at his grim Galloway castle, and had had a long midnight colloquy with Roxburghe on Tweedside. He had a pretty tale for his master, once he could get to him.
But in the days when our grandsires and great-grandsires were young, salmon were regarded as of small value; they sold possibly at 2d. the pound, and servants in Tweedside homes were wont to bargain that they should not be forced to eat salmon every day of the week. Then, practically no method of capture was illegal; you might take him almost when, where, and how you pleased.
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