"[Footnote: Elliot was the family name of Lord Minto.]
The effusions of one of the local poets whose district we had passed
through had raised our expectations in the following lines:
There's a wee toon on the Borders
That my heart sair langs to see,
Where in youthful days I wander'd,
Knowing every bank and brae;
O'er the hills and through the valleys,
Thro' the woodlands wild and free,
Thro' the narrow straits and loanings,
There my heart sair langs to be.
[Illustration: THE COMMON RIDING, LANGHOLM.]
There was also an old saying, "Out of the world and into Langholm,"
which seemed very applicable to ourselves, for after a walk of
thirty-two and a half miles through a lonely and hilly country, without
a solitary house of call for twenty-three, our hungry and weary
condition may be imagined when we entered Langholm just on the stroke of
eleven o'clock at night.
We went to the Temperance Hotel, but were informed they were full. We
called at the other four inns with the same result. Next we appealed to
the solitary police officer, who told us curtly that the inns closed at
eleven and the lodgings at ten, and marched away without another word.
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