other was being made at the Cross of Edinburgh. A
trumpet blew and the street was filled with footsteps.

"The laird of Glenfernie," said the lawyer, "has joined, I hear, Sir
John Cope at Dunbar. It is not impossible that you may have speech
together from opposing battle-lines." He poured wine. "My bag of news
is empty, Captain Rullock."

Ian rose from his seat. His face was gray and twisted, his voice, when
he spoke, hollow, low, and dry. "I must go now to Lord George
Murray.... It was all news, Mr. Wotherspoon. I--What are words,
anyhow? Give you good day, sir!"

Mr. Wotherspoon, standing in his door, watched him down the stair and
forth from the house. "He goes brawly! How much is night, and how much
streak of dawn?"

* * * * *

Sir John Cope, King George's general in Scotland, had but a small
army. It was necessary in the highest degree that Prince Charles
Edward should meet and defeat this force before it was enlarged,
before from England came more and more regular troops.... A battle
won meant prestige gained, the coming over of doubting thousands, an
echo into England that would bring the definite accession of great
Tory names. Cope and his twenty-five hundred men, regulars and
volunteers, approaching Edinburgh from the east, took position near
the village of Prestonpans. On the morning of the 20th of September
out moved to meet him the Prince and Lord George Murray, behind them
less than two thousand men.

By afternoon the two forces confronted each the other; but Cope had
chosen well, the right position. The sea guarded one flank, a deep and
wide field ditch full of water the other. In his rear were stone
walls, and before him a wide marsh. The Jacobite strength halted,
reconnoitered, must perforce at last come to a standstill before
Cope's natural fortress. There was little artillery, no great number
of horse. Even the bravest of the brave, Highland or Lowland, might
draw back from the thought of trying to cross that marsh, of meeting
the moat-like ditch under Cope's musket-fire. Sunset came amid
perturbation, a sense of check, impending disaster.

Ian Rullock, acting for the moment as aide-de-camp, had spent the day
on horseback. Released in the late afternoon, lodged in a hut at the
edge of the small camp, he used the moment's leisure to climb a small
hill and at its height to throw himself down beside a broken cairn. He
shut his eyes, but after a few moments opened t