on the head
of this celebrated freebooter. He therefore ordered the rearguard to join
the centre, and both to close up to the advance, doubling his files so as
to occupy with his column the whole practicable part of the road, and to
present such a front as its breadth admitted. Dougal, to whom he said in
a whisper, "You dog, if you have deceived me, you shall die for it!" was
placed in the centre, between two grenadiers, with positive orders to
shoot him if he attempted an escape. The same situation was assigned to
us, as being the safest, and Captain Thornton, taking his half-pike from
the soldier who carried it, placed himself at the head of his little
detachment, and gave the word to march forward.

The party advanced with the firmness of English soldiers. Not so Andrew
Fairservice, who was frightened out of his wits; and not so, if truth
must be told, either the Bailie or I myself, who, without feeling the
same degree of trepidation, could not with stoical indifference see our
lives exposed to hazard in a quarrel with which we had no concern. But
there was neither time for remonstrance nor remedy.

We approached within about twenty yards of the spot where the advanced
guard had seen some appearance of an enemy. It was one of those
promontories which run into the lake, and round the base of which the
road had hitherto winded in the manner I have described. In the present
case, however, the path, instead of keeping the water's edge, sealed the
promontory by one or two rapid zigzags, carried in a broken track along
the precipitous face of a slaty grey rock, which would otherwise have
been absolutely inaccessible. On the top of this rock, only to be
approached by a road so broken, so narrow, and so precarious, the
corporal declared he had seen the bonnets and long-barrelled guns of
several mountaineers, apparently couched among the long heath and
brushwood which crested the eminence. Captain Thornton ordered him to
move forward with three files, to dislodge the supposed ambuscade, while,
at a more slow but steady pace, he advanced to his support with the rest
of his party.

The attack which he meditated was prevented by the unexpected apparition
of a female upon the summit of the rock.

"Stand!" she said, with a commanding tone, "and tell me what ye seek in
MacGregor's country?"

I have seldom seen a finer or more commanding form than this woman. She
might be between the term of forty and fifty years, and had a co