h from a window, but
we did not bide to tell him.

"Slochd! slochd! club and steel!" more nimble burghers cried, jumping
out at closes in our rear, and following with neither hose nor brogue,
but the kilt thrown at one toss on the haunch and some weapon in hand.
And the whole wide street was stark awake.

The MacNicolls must have numbered fully threescore. They had only made
a pretence (we learned again) of leaving the town, and had hung on the
riverside till they fancied their attempt at seizing Maclachlan was
secure from the interference of the townfolk. They were packed in a mass
in the close and on the stair, and the foremost were solemnly battering
at the night door at the top of the first flight of stairs, crying,
"_Fuil airson fuil!_--blood for blood, out with young Lachie!"

We fell to on the rearmost with a will, first of all with the bare fist,
for half of this midnight army were my own neighbours in Glen Shira,
peaceable men in ordinary affairs, kirk-goers, law-abiders, though
maybe a little common in the quality, and between them and the mustering
burghers there was no feud. For a while we fought it dourly in the
darkness with the fingers at the throat or the fist in the face, or
wrestled warmly on the plain-stones, or laid out, such as had staves,
with good vigour on the bonneted heads. Into the close we could
not--soon I saw it--push our way, for the enemy filled it--a dense mass
of tartan--stinking with peat and oozing with the day's debauchery.

"We'll have him out, if it's in bits," they said, and aye upon the
stair-head banged the door.

"No remedy in this way for the folks besieged," thought I, and stepping
aside I began to wonder how best to aid our friends by strategy rather
than force of arms. All at once I had mind that at the back of the land
facing the shore an outhouse with a thatched roof ran at a high pitch
well up against the kitchen window, and I stepped through a close
farther up and set, at this outhouse, to the climbing, leaving my
friends fighting out in the darkness in a town tumultuous. To get up
over the eaves of the outhouse was no easy task, and I would have failed
without a doubt had not the stratagem of John Splendid come to his aid
a little later than my own and sent him after me. He helped me first on
the roof, and I had him soon beside me. The window lay unguarded (all
the inmates of the house being at the front), and we stepped in and
found ourselves soon in a household