had only to hope that some favourable circumstance
would restore their spirits and courage.

Kettledrummle, Poundtext, Macbriar, and other preachers, busied
themselves in their ranks, and prevailed on them to raise a psalm. But
the superstitious among them observed, as an ill omen, that their song of
praise and triumph sunk into "a quaver of consternation," and resembled
rather a penitentiary stave sung on the scaffold of a condemned criminal,
than the bold strain which had resounded along the wild heath of
Loudon-hill, in anticipation of that day's victory. The melancholy melody
soon received a rough accompaniment; the royal soldiers shouted, the
Highlanders yelled, the cannon began to fire on one side, and the
musketry on both, and the bridge of Bothwell, with the banks adjacent,
were involved in wreaths of smoke.

CHAPTER XI.

As e'er ye saw the rain doun fa',
Or yet the arrow from the bow,
Sae our Scots lads fell even down,
And they lay slain on every knowe.
Old Ballad.

Ere Morton or Burley had reached the post to be defended, the enemy had
commenced an attack upon it with great spirit. The two regiments of
Foot-Guards, formed into a close column, rushed forward to the river; one
corps, deploying along the right bank, commenced a galling fire on the
defenders of the pass, while the other pressed on to occupy the bridge.
The insurgents sustained the attack with great constancy and courage; and
while part of their number returned the fire across the river, the rest
maintained a discharge of musketry upon the further end of the bridge
itself, and every avenue by which the soldiers endeavoured to approach
it. The latter suffered severely, but still gained ground, and the head
of their column was already upon the bridge, when the arrival of Morton
changed the scene; and his marksmen, commencing upon the pass a fire as
well aimed as it was sustained and regular, compelled the assailants to
retire with much loss. They were a second time brought up to the charge,
and a second time repulsed with still greater loss, as Burley had now
brought his party into action. The fire was continued with the utmost
vehemence on both sides, and the issue of the action seemed very dubious.

Monmouth, mounted on a superb white charger, might be discovered on the
top of the right bank of the river, urging, ent