retreating with so much coolness as evidently showed, that, on the one
hand, they were undismayed by the approach of so considerable a force as
was moving against them, and conscious, on the other, that they were
supported by numbers sufficient for their protection. This incident
occasioned a halt through the whole body of cavalry; and while
Claverhouse himself received the report of his advanced guard, which had
been thus driven back upon the main body, Lord Evandale advanced to the
top of the ridge over which the enemy's horsemen had retired, and Major
Allan, Cornet Grahame, and the other officers, employed themselves in
extricating the regiment from the broken ground, and drawing them up on
the side of the hill in two lines, the one to support the other.

The word was then given to advance; and in a few minutes the first lines
stood on the brow and commanded the prospect on the other side. The
second line closed upon them, and also the rear-guard with the prisoners;
so that Morton and his companions in captivity could, in like manner, see
the form of opposition which was now offered to the farther progress of
their captors.

The brow of the hill, on which the royal Life-Guards were now drawn up,
sloped downwards (on the side opposite to that which they had ascended)
with a gentle declivity, for more than a quarter of a mile, and presented
ground, which, though unequal in some places, was not altogether
unfavourable for the manoeuvres of cavalry, until near the bottom, when
the slope terminated in a marshy level, traversed through its whole
length by what seemed either a natural gully, or a deep artificial drain,
the sides of which were broken by springs, trenches filled with water,
out of which peats and turf had been dug, and here and there by some
straggling thickets of alders which loved the moistness so well, that
they continued to live as bushes, although too much dwarfed by the sour
soil and the stagnant bog-water to ascend into trees. Beyond this ditch,
or gully, the ground arose into a second heathy swell, or rather hill,
near to the foot of which, and' as if with the object of defending the
broken ground and ditch that covered their front, the body of insurgents
appeared to be drawn up with the purpose of abiding battle.

Their infantry was divided into three lines. The first, tolerably
provided with fire-arms, were advanced almost close to the verge of the
bog, so that their fire must necessarily annoy t