But at least there was one Border highwayman—or is "footpad" here the more correct term?—who, if the story is true, may surely claim to have been the most picturesque and romantic of criminals. In this instance the malefactor was a woman, not a man, and her name was Grizel Cochrane, member of (or at least sprung from) a noble family, which later produced one of the most famous seamen in the annals of naval history. Her story is very well known, and it may therefore be sufficient to say here that her father, having been concerned in one of the many political conspiracies which in those days were judged to merit death, lay in prison under sentence, and that, to save his life, the brave lady, disguised as a man, on two separate occasions, on Tweedmouth moor, robbed the mail by which her father's death warrant was being conveyed from London to Edinburgh. Thus she twice prevented the sentence from being carried out, and eventually the prisoner was pardoned.
The greater number of highway robberies in the Border, however, were accomplished without the aid of a horse or the disguise of a crape mask. The Border highwayman, as a rule, was no picturesque Claude Duval, no chivalrous villain of romance who would tread a measure in the moonlight with the lady whose coach he had plundered, thereafter returning her jewels in recompense for the favour of the dance. He was much more often of the squalid type—in a word, a footpad—frequently a member of some wandering gipsy gang, who, attending country fair or tryst, had little difficulty in ascertaining which one of the many farmers present it would be easiest and most profitable to rob as he steered his more or less devious course homeward in the evening across the waste. What the farmer had that day been paid for his cattle or sheep he usually carried with him, probably in the form of gold; for in those days there were of course no country agencies of banks in which the money might be safely deposited. Not unusually, too, the farmer had swallowed enough liquor to make him reckless of consequences; and the loneliness of the country-side, and the absence of decent roads, too often combined with the condition of the farmer to make him an easy prey to some little band of miscreants who had dogged him from the fair.
Frequently, too, these robbers were in league with the keepers of low roadside public-houses, where passengers on their homeward way were encouraged—nothing loth, as a rule—to halt and refresh steed and rider, and possibly whilst they drank their pistols were tampered with. Who does not remember the meeting of Harry Bertram and Dandie Dinmont in such a place? And who has not read in the author's notes to Guy Mannering, Sir Walter's account of the visit to Mump's Ha' of Fighting Charlie of Liddesdale, and what befell him thereafter? In spite of a head that the potations pressed on him by an over-kind landlady had caused to hum like an angry hive of bees, Charlie had sense enough, after he had travelled a few miles on his homeward way, to examine his pistols. Finding that the charges had been drawn and tow substituted, Charlie, now considerably sobered, carefully reloaded them, a precaution which certainly saved his money, and possibly his life as well, for he was presently attacked by a party of armed men, who, however, fled on finding that "the tow was out."
Mump's Ha' was in Cumberland, near Gilsland. In olden days it was a place of most evil repute, but one may question if in ill name it could take precedence of a similar establishment which in the days of our great-grandfathers stood on Soutra Hill, on the Lauder road. Travellers had need to give this place a wide berth, for it was a veritable den—indeed "Lowrie's Den" was the name by which it was known, and feared, by every respectable person. Many a bloody, drunken fight took place there, many were the evil deeds done and the robberies committed; not even was murder unknown in its immediate vicinity.
Well for us that in our day we know of such places only by ancient repute. When we talk regretfully of "the good old days," we are apt to leave out of the reckoning those Mump's Ha's and Lowrie's Dens of our forefathers' times; we forget to add to the burden of a journey such items as indifferent roads and highway robbers, and the possibility of reaching one's destination minus purse, watch, or rings. From an encounter with highwaymen, few passengers emerged with flying colours, having had the best of the deal. Not to many persons was such fortune given as fell to the lot of a country lass near Kelso one winter's evening. She had little enough to lose in the way of money or valuables, and it was "bogles," more than the fear of footpads that disturbed her mind as she stumped along that muddy road in the gathering gloom. Consequently, after one terrified shriek, it was almost a relief to her to find that the two figures which bounced out on her from the blackness, demanding her money, were flesh and blood like herself, and not denizens of another world. Five or six shillings was all that the poor lass possessed, but they took that paltry sum. Only, when she pled hard that they should leave her at least a trifle to take to her mother, who was very poor, one of the footpads relented, and with a gruff, "Hey, then!" thrust three coins back into her not unwilling hand. With a mixture of joy and fear the girl fled into the darkness, but as she ran, she thought she heard a shout, and soon, to her consternation, she made certain that hurrying footsteps were coming up behind her. In dire terror now, she left the road, and crept into some bushes in an adjacent hollow. There, with thumping heart, she cowered whilst two men ran past, and presently, whilst she still lay hid, they returned, vowing loud vengeance on some person who had "done" them. It was long ere the poor girl dared leave her shelter, late ere she got home to tell her tale to an anxious mother. But when the three rescued shillings were produced, the cause of the robbers' anger was not far to seek; they were not shillings that came this time from the depths of a capacious pocket, but three golden guineas.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
When the skipper of some small coastal trading craft is able to retire from leading a sea-faring life, it is usually within close range of the briny, tarry whiffs that with every breeze come puffing from the harbour of some little port out of which he has formerly traded that he sets up his shore-going abode. There, when he has paid off for the last time, and everything, so to speak, is coiled down and made ship-shape, he settles within easy hail of old cronies like himself; and if he should chance to be one of those who have lived all their days with only their ship for wife, then he not unnaturally falls easily into the habit of dropping, of an evening, into the snug, well-lit bar-parlour of the "Goat and Compasses" or the "Mariner's Friend," or some such house of entertainment, with its glowing fire and warm, seductive, tobacco-and grog-scented atmosphere, there to wile away the time swopping yarns with old friends. Sometimes, if opportunity offer, he is not averse from a mild game of cards for moderate points; and usually he takes, or at least in old days he used to take, his liquor hot—and strong.
Captain Alexander Craes was one of those retired merchant skippers; but he had not, like the majority of his fellows, settled near the sea-coast. It was Kelso that had drawn him like a loadstone. An inland-bred man, in his boyhood he had run away to sea, and the sea, that had irresistibly woed his youthful fancy, had no whit fulfilled his boyish dreams. It was not always blue, he found; the ship was not always running before a spanking breeze; more kicks than ha'pence, more rope's-endings than blessings, came his way during the first few years of his sailor life. Perhaps it was because he had been ashamed to go back and own himself beaten, or perhaps it was his native Border dourness that had caused him to stick to it; but at any rate he did stick to it—though, like most sailors, he growled, and even swore sometimes, that he hated the life. And now, in the winter of 1784-5, here he was in Kelso, stout, weather-beaten, grey-headed, over fifty, living within earshot of the deep voice of flooded Tweed roaring and fretting over the barrier with which the devil, at bidding of Michael Scott the Wizard, long syne dammed its course. Many a time when the captain's little vessel, close hauled, had been threshing through leaden-grey seas under hurrying, leaden-grey skies and bitter snow squalls, with a foul wind persistently pounding at her day after day, he had thought, as some more than ordinarily angry puff whitened the water to windward and broke him off his course, with the weather leech of his close-reefed topsail shivering, how pleasant it must be to be a landsman, to go where he pleased in spite of wind or weather. Ah! they were the happy ones, those lucky landsmen, who could always do as they chose, blow high, blow low.
Well, here he was at last, drinking in all a landsman's pleasures, enjoying his privileges—and not too old yet, he told himself with self-conscious chuckle, to raise a pleasant flutter of expectation in the hearts of Kelso's widows and maidens. Not that he was a marrying man, he would sometimes protest; far from it, indeed. Yet they did say that the landlord of a rival inn was heard to remark that "the cauptain gaed ower aften to Lucky G——'s howf. It wasna hardlys decent, an' her man no deid a twalmonth." Maybe, however, the good widow's brand of whisky was more grateful to the captain's palate, or the company assembled in her snug parlour lightsomer, or at least less dour, than was to be found at the rival inn, where the landlord was an elder of the kirk and most stern opponent of all lightness and frivolity. Whatever the cause, however, it is certain that the captain did acquire the habit of dropping in very frequently at the widow's, where he was always a welcome guest. And it was from a merry evening there that, with a "tumbler" or two inside his ample waistcoat, he set out for home one black February night when a gusty wind drove thin sleety rain rattling against the window panes of the quiet little town, and emptied the silent, moss-grown streets very effectively.
An hour or two later, it might be, two men, Adam Hislop and William Wallace, were noisily steering a somewhat devious and uncertain course homeward, when one of them tripped over a bulky object huddled on the ground, and with an astonished curse fell heavily.