say, 'just fling your washes and your French dentifrishes in the back o'

the fire, for that's the place for them; and awa' down to a burn side,
and wash yersel' in cauld hill water, and dry your bonny hair in the

caller wind o' the muirs, the way that my mother aye washed hers, and
that I have aye made it a practice to have wishen mines - just you do

what I tell ye, my dear, and ye'll give me news of it! Ye'll have hair,
and routh of hair, a pigtail as thick's my arm,' I said, `and the

bonniest colour like the clear gowden guineas, so as the lads in kirk'll
no can keep their eyes off it!' Weel, it lasted out her time, puir

thing! I cuttit a lock of it upon her corp that was lying there sae
cauld. I'll show it ye some of thir days if ye're good. But, as I was

sayin', my mither - "
On the death of the father there remained golden-haired Kirstie, who

took service with her distant kinsfolk, the Rutherfords, and black-a-
vised Gilbert, twenty years older, who farmed the Cauldstaneslap,

married, and begot four sons between 1773 and 1784, and a daughter, like
a postscript, in '97, the year of Camperdown and Cape St. Vincent. It

seemed it was a tradition in the family to wind up with a belated girl.
In 1804, at the age of sixty, Gilbert met an end that might be called

heroic. He was due home from market any time from eight at night till
five in the morning, and in any condition from the quarrelsome to the

speechless, for he maintained to that age the goodly customs of the
Scots farmer. It was known on this occasion that he had a good bit of

money to bring home; the word had gone round loosely. The laird had
shown his guineas, and if anybody had but noticed it, there was an ill-

looking, vagabond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that drew out of the
market long ere it was dusk and took the hill-road by Hermiston, where

it was not to be believed that they had lawful business. One of the
country-side, one Dickieson, they took with them to be their guide, and

dear he paid for it! Of a sudden in the ford of the Broken Dykes, this
vermin clan fell on the laird, six to one, and him three parts asleep,

having drunk hard. But it is ill to catch an Elliott.
For a while, in the night and the black water that was deep as to his

saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and
great was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade was

burst, and he rode for home with a pistol-ball in him, three knife
wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a

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

help. It was at a graceless face that he asked mercy. As soon as Hob
saw, by the glint of the lantern, the eyes shining and the whiteness of

the teeth in the man's face, "Damn you!" says he; "ye hae your teeth,
hae ye?" and rode his horse to and fro upon that human remnant. Beyond

that, Dandie must dismount with the lantern to be their guide; he was
the youngest son, scarce twenty at the time. "A' nicht long they gaed

in the wet heath and jennipers, and whaur they gaed they neither knew
nor cared, but just followed the bluid stains and the footprints o'

their faither's murderers. And a' nicht Dandie had his nose to the
grund like a tyke, and the ithers followed and spak' naething, neither

black nor white. There was nae noise to be heard, but just the sough of
the swalled burns, and Hob, the dour yin, risping his teeth as he gaed."

With the first glint of the morning they saw they were on the drove
road, and at that the four stopped and had a dram to their breakfasts,

for they knew that Dand must have guided them right, and the rogues
could be but little ahead, hot foot for Edinburgh by the way of the

Pentland Hills. By eight o'clock they had word of them - a shepherd had
seen four men "uncoly mishandled" go by in the last hour. "That's yin a

piece," says Clem, and swung his cudgel. "Five o' them!" says Hob.
"God's death, but the faither was a man! And him drunk!" And then

there befell them what my author termed "a sair misbegowk," for they
were overtaken by a posse of mounted neighbours come to aid in the

pursuit. Four sour faces looked on the reinforcement. "The Deil's
broughten you!" said Clem, and they rode thenceforward in the rear of

the party with hanging heads. Before ten they had found and secured the
rogues, and by three of the afternoon, as they rode up the Vennel with

their prisoners, they were aware of a concourse of people bearing in
their midst something that dripped. "For the boady of the saxt,"

pursued Kirstie, "wi' his head smashed like a hazelnit, had been a' that
nicht in the chairge o' Hermiston Water, and it dunting it on the

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
perhaps thrice or so at the sheep-washing, since the chase of his