ddies of the stream, and required the
assistance of their companions to save them from drowning. Others, hurt
by shots or blows in the confused mele'e, implored help or threatened
vengeance, and in one or two instances such accidents led to actual
strife. The trumpets, therefore, sounded the retreat, announcing that the
commanding officer, with whatsoever unwillingness, had for the present
relinquished hopes of the important prize which had thus unexpectedly
escaped his grasp, and the troopers began slowly, reluctantly, and
brawling with each other as they returned, again to assume their ranks. I
could see them darkening, as they formed on the southern bank of the
river,--whose murmurs, long drowned by the louder cries of vengeful
pursuit, were now heard hoarsely mingling with the deep, discontented,
and reproachful voices of the disappointed horsemen.

Hitherto I had been as it were a mere spectator, though far from an
uninterested one, of the singular scene which had passed. But now I heard
a voice suddenly exclaim, "Where is the English stranger?--It was he gave
Rob Roy the knife to cut the belt."

"Cleeve the pock-pudding to the chafts!" cried one voice.

"Weize a brace of balls through his harn-pan!" said a second.

"Drive three inches of cauld airn into his brisket!" shouted a third.

And I heard several horses galloping to and fro, with the kind purpose,
doubtless, of executing these denunciations. I was immediately awakened
to the sense of my situation, and to the certainty that armed men, having
no restraint whatever on their irritated and inflamed passions, would
probably begin by shooting or cutting me down, and afterwards investigate
the justice of the action. Impressed by this belief, I leaped from my
horse, and turning him loose, plunged into a bush of alder-trees, where,
considering the advancing obscurity of the night, I thought there was
little chance of my being discovered. Had I been near enough to the Duke
to have invoked his personal protection, I would have done so; but he had
already commenced his retreat, and I saw no officer on the left bank of
the river, of authority sufficient to have afforded protection, in case
of my surrendering myself. I thought there was no point of honour which
could require, in such circumstances, an unnecessary exposure of my life.
My first idea, when the tumult began to be appeased, and the clatter of
the horses' feet was heard less frequently in the immediate vici