"and so I was; but it was to
blaw folk to their warm dinner, or at the warst to a decent kirkyard,
and no to skirl them awa' to a bluidy braeside, where there was deil a
bedral but the hooded craw. But bide ye, ye shall hear what cam o't, and
how far I am bund to be bedesman to the Ravenswoods. Till't, ye see, we
gaed on a braw simmer morning, twenty-fourth of June, saxteen hundred
and se'enty-nine, of a' the days of the month and year--drums beat, guns
rattled, horses kicked and trampled. Hackstoun of Rathillet keepit the
brig wi' mustket and carabine and pike, sword and scythe for what I ken,
and we horsemen were ordered down to cross at the ford,--I hate fords
at a' times, let abee when there's thousands of armed men on the other
side. There was auld Ravenswood brandishing his Andrew Ferrara at the
head, and crying to us to come and buckle to, as if we had been gaun to
a fair; there was Caleb Balderstone, that is living yet, flourishing in
the rear, and swearing Gog and Magog, he would put steel through the gus
of ony man that turned bridle; there was young Allan Ravenswood, that
was then Master, wi' a bended pistol in his hand--it was a mercy it gaed
na aff!--crying to me, that had scarce as much wind left as serve the
necessary purpose of my ain lungs, 'Sound, you poltroon!--sound, you
damned cowardly villain, or I will blow your brains out!' and, to be
sure, I blew sic points of war that the scraugh of a clockin-hen was
music to them."

"Well, sir, cut all this short," said Ravenswood.

"Short! I had like to hae been cut short mysell, in the flower of my
youth, as Scripture says; and that's the very thing that I compleen o'.
Weel! in to the water we behoved a' to splash, heels ower head, sit or
fa'--ae horse driving on anither, as is the way of brute beasts, and
riders that hae as little sense; the very bushes on the ither side were
a-bleeze wi' the flashes of the Whig guns; and my horse had just taen the
grund, when a blackavised westland carle--I wad mind the face o' him a
hundred years yet--an ee like a wild falcon's, and a beard as broad
as my shovel--clapped the end o' his lang black gun within a quarter's
length of my lug! By the grace o' Mercy, the horse swarved round, and I
fell aff at the tae side as the ball whistled by at the tither, and the
fell auld lord took the Whig such a swauk wi' his broadsword that he
made twa pieces o' his head, and down fell the lurdance wi' a' his bouk
abune me."

"You wer