dying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode! In the
mirk night, with his broken bridle and his head swimming, he dug his
spurs to the rowels in the horse's side, and the horse, that was even
worse off than himself, the poor creature! screamed out loud like a
person as he went, so that the hills echoed with it, and the folks at
Cauldstaneslap got to their feet about the table and looked at each
other with white faces. The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird
won the length of the house and fell there on the threshold. To the son
that raised him he gave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way
up the thieves had seemed to him to be at his heels, but now the
hallucination left him - he saw them again in the place of the ambuscade
- and the thirst of vengeance seized on his dying mind. Raising himself
and pointing with an imperious finger into the black night from which he
had come, he uttered the single command, "Brocken Dykes," and fainted.
He had never been loved, but he had been feared in honour. At that
sight, at that word, gasped out at them from a toothless and bleeding
mouth, the old Elliott spirit awoke with a shout in the four sons.
"Wanting the hat," continues my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly
follow, for she told this tale like one inspired, "wanting guns, for
there wasna twa grains o' pouder in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than
their sticks into their hands, the fower o' them took the road. Only
Hob, and that was the eldest, hunkered at the doorsill where the blood
had rin, fyled his hand wi' it - and haddit it up to Heeven in the way
o' the auld Border aith. `Hell shall have her ain again this nicht!' he
raired, and rode forth upon his earrand." It was three miles to Broken
Dykes, down hill, and a sore road. Kirstie has seen men from Edinburgh
dismounting there in plain day to lead their horses. But the four
brothers rode it as if Auld Hornie were behind and Heaven in front.
Come to the ford, and there was Dickieson. By all tales, he was not
dead, but breathed and reared upon his elbow, and cried out to them for