Guy Mannering.

244 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign, where a tankard of
ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler, and a hieroglyphical scrawl below attempted to express a promise of
"good entertainment for mall and horse." Brown was
no fastidious traveller-he stopped and entered the cabaret.*
- 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
Mump'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 Border 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
fiom, 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
Mump'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 Elliott, but well known by his sobriquet 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:Charlie had been at Stagshaw-bank Fair, had sold his sheep or cattle,
or whatever lie had brought to market, and was on his return to Liddesdale. There were then no country banks where cash could be
deposited, and bills received instead, which greatly encouraged robbery in that wild country, as the objects of plunder were usually
fraught with gold. The robbers had spies in the fair, by means of
whom they generally knew whose purse was best stocked, and who
took a lonely and desolate road homeward,-those, in short, who were
best worth robbing, and likely to be most easily robbed.
All this Charlie knew full well;-but he had a pair of excellent pistols, and a dauntless heart. He stopped at Mump's Ha', notwithstanding the evil character of the place. His horse was accommodated
where it might have the necessary rest and feed of corn; and Charlie
himself, a dashing fellow, grew gracious with the landlady, a buxom