enadiers preparing to throw their grenades among the bushes, and the
rank and file ready to support them in a close and combined assault.

Dougal, finding himself forgotten in the scuffle, had wisely crept into
the thicket which overhung the road, and was already mounting the cliff
with the agility of a wild-cat. Frank hastily followed his example. For
the spattering fire, directed on the advancing party of soldiers, the
loud reports of muskets, and the explosion of the grenades, made the
path no comfortable place for those without arms. The Bailie, however,
had only been able to scramble about twenty feet above the path when,
his foot slipping, he would certainly have fallen into the lake had not
the branch of a ragged thorn caught his riding-coat and supported him in
mid-air, where he hung very like a sign in front of a hostelry. Andrew
Fairservice had made somewhat better speed, but even he had only
succeeded in reaching a ledge from which he could neither ascend nor yet
come down. On this narrow promontory he footed it up and down, much like
a hen on a hot girdle, and roared for mercy in Gaelic and English
alternately, accordingly as he thought the victory inclined toward the
soldiers or went in favour of the outlaws.

But on this occasion it was the Highlanders who were destined to win.
They fought altogether under cover, and, from the number of musket
flashes they held also a great superiority in point of numbers. At all
events Frank soon saw the English officer stripped of his hat and arms,
and his men, with sullen and dejected countenances, delivering up their
muskets to the victorious foe.

The Bailie was, however, rescued by "the Dougal cratur," as the
magistrate called him, who cut off the tails of his coat and lowered him
to the ground. Then, when at last he was somewhat appeased, on account
of Frank's seeming desertion, he counselled that they should be in no
hurry to approach Mac-Gregor's wife, who would certainly be most
dangerous in the moment of victory.

Andrew Fairservice had already been espied on his airy perch, from which
the Highlanders soon made him descend, by threatening him with their
guns and even firing a stray shot or two over his head, so that
presently he fell to the earth among them. The outlaws stood ready to
receive him, and ere he could gain his legs, they had, with the most
admirable celerity, stripped him of periwig, hat, coat, doublet,
stockings, and shoes. In other circumstance