stanes, and grunding it on the shallows, and flinging the deid thing
heels-ower-hurdie at the Fa's o' Spango; and in the first o' the day,
Tweed had got a hold o' him and carried him off like a wind, for it was
uncoly swalled, and raced wi' him, bobbing under brae-sides, and was
long playing with the creature in the drumlie lynns under the castle,
and at the hinder end of all cuist him up on the starling of
Crossmichael brig. Sae there they were a'thegither at last (for
Dickieson had been brought in on a cart long syne), and folk could see
what mainner o'man my brither had been that had held his head again sax
and saved the siller, and him drunk!" Thus died of honourable injuries
and in the savour of fame Gilbert Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap; but his
sons had scarce less glory out of the business. Their savage haste, the
skill with which Dand had found and followed the trail, the barbarity to
the wounded Dickieson (which was like an open secret in the county), and
the doom which it was currently supposed they had intended for the
others, struck and stirred popular imagination. Some century earlier
the last of the minstrels might have fashioned the last of the ballads
out of that Homeric fight and chase; but the spirit was dead, or had
been reincarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and the degenerate
moorsmen must be content to tell the tale in prose, and to make of the
"Four Black Brothers" a unit after the fashion of the "Twelve Apostles"
or the "Three Musketeers."

Robert, Gilbert, Clement, and Andrew - in the proper Border diminutives,
Hob, Gib, Clem, and Dand Elliott - these ballad heroes, had much in
common; in particular, their high sense of the family and the family
honour; but they went diverse ways, and prospered and failed in
different businesses. According to Kirstie, "they had a' bees in their
bonnets but Hob." Hob the laird was, indeed, essentially a decent man.
An elder of the Kirk, nobody had heard an oath upon his lips, save