When she reached this spot she perceived that the church

"Ay, ay; he respected the little god Cupid when he saw him perched on the Dun of Singleside. And is poor Lucy to keep house with that old fool and his wife, who is just the knight himself in petticoats?"

"No--we parried that. Singieside House is to be repaired for the young people, and to be called hereafter Mount Hazlewood."

"And do you yourself, Colonel, propose to continue at Woodbourne?"

"Only till we carry these plans into effect. See, here's the plan of my Bungalow, with all convenience for being separate and sulky when I please."

"And, being situated, as I see, next door to the old castle, you may repair Donagild's tower for the nocturnal contemplation of the celestial bodies? Bravo, Colonel!"

"No, no, my dear counsellor! here ends THE ASTROLOGER."

IT is fitting to explain to the reader the locality described in this chapter. There is, or rather I should say there was, a little inn, called Mumps's Hall, that is, being interpreted, Beggar's Hotel, near to Gilsland, which had not then attained its present fame as a Spa. It was a hedge alehouse, where the Bolder farmers of either country often stopped to refresh themselves and their nags, in their way to and from the fairs and trysts in Cumberland, and especially those who came from or went to Scotland, through a barren and lonely district, without either road or pathway, emphatically called the Waste of Bewcastle. At the period when the adventures described in the novel are supposed to have taken place, there were many instances of attacks by freebooters on those who travelled through this wild, district, and Mumps's Ha' had a bad reputation for harbouring the banditti who committed such depredations.

An old and sturdy yeoman belonging to the Scottish side, by surname an Armstrong or Elliot, but known by his soubriquet of Fighting Charlie of Liddesdale, and still remembered for the courage he displayed in the frequent frays which took place on the Border fifty or sixty years since, had the following adventure in the Waste, which suggested the idea of the scene in the text .

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