now and then coursing with Hamlet, who, in consequence, showed no
further inclination for mutton.

* * * * *

A further stroll among the hills brought us to what Scott pronounced
the remains of a Roman camp, and as we sat upon a hillock which had
once formed a part of the ramparts, he pointed out the traces of the
lines and bulwarks, and the pratorium, and showed a knowledge of
castramatation that would not have disgraced the antiquarian Oldbuck
himself. Indeed, various circumstances that I observed about Scott
during my visit, concurred to persuade me that many of the antiquarian
humors of Monkbarns were taken from his own richly compounded
character, and that some of the scenes and personages of that admirable
novel were furnished by his immediate neighborhood.

He gave me several anecdotes of a noted pauper named Andrew Gemmells,
or Gammel, as it was pronounced, who had once flourished on the banks
of Galla Water, immediately opposite Abbotsford, and whom he had seen
and talked and joked with when a boy; and I instantly recognized the
likeness of that mirror of philosophic vagabonds and Nestor of beggars,
Edie Ochiltree. I was on the point of pronouncing the name and
recognizing the portrait, when I recollected the incognito observed by
Scott with respect to his novels, and checked myself; but it was one
among many things that tended to convince me of his authorship.

His picture of Andrew Gemmells exactly accorded with that of Edie as to
his height, carriage, and soldier-like air, as well as his arch and
sarcastic humor. His home, if home he had, was at Galashiels; but he
went "daundering" about the country, along the green shaws and beside