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His parents were then residing in the parish of the Tron church, apparently on a visit to the Scottish capital, as the small estate which his father Joseph Hume, or Home, inherited, lay in Berwickshire, on the banks of the Whitadder or Whitewater, a few miles from the border, and within sight of English ground.
South-eastwards, a few miles along the coast, lay Berwick-on-Tweed, the scene of John Cairns's future labours as a minister; while away in the opposite direction, in the heart of the Lammermoors, near the headwaters of the Whitadder and the Dye, was the home of his immediate ancestors.
No one has seen and not admired the romantic amphitheatre below Edrington Castle, through which the Whitadder coils like a beautiful serpent glittering in the sun, and sports in fantastic curves beneath the pasture-clad hills, the grey ruin, the mossy and precipitous crag, and the pyramid of woods, whose branches, meeting from either side, bend down and kiss the glittering river, till its waters seem lost in their leafy bosom.
Millknowe is a large sheep-farm in the heart of the Lammermoors, just where the young Whitadder winds round the base of Spartleton Law. The family at Millknowe, consisting at this time of three brothers and two sisters, all of whom had reached middle life, were relatives of his father, the connection dating from the time when his forebears were farmers in the same region.
The Chevalier had reached a spot on the right bank of the Whitadder, which is now in a field of the farm of Swallowdean, when his noble steed, becoming entangled with its cumbrous trappings, stumbled, and hurled its rider to the earth. The next moment the swords of Trotter and Dickson were through the body of the unfortunate Chevalier.
'It is a big fluffy fly, like a draggled mayfly, fished wet, in the dark. I used to be fond of it, but age, sighed the Earl, 'and fear of rheumatism have separated the bustard and me. 'I should like to try it very much, said Logan. 'I often fished Tweed and Whitadder, at night, when I was a boy, but we used a small dark fly.
The paternal mansion was little more than a very modest farmhouse, and the property derived its name of Ninewells from a considerable spring, which breaks out on the slope in front of the house, and falls into the Whitadder.
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