to have their full and emphatic effect;
for a wild halloo, which went from rank to rank on the appearance of the
soldiers, intimated the resolution of the insurgents to fight to the
uttermost.

As the horsemen halted their lines on the ridge of the hill, their
trumpets and kettle-drums sounded a bold and warlike flourish of menace
and defiance, that rang along the waste like the shrill summons of a
destroying angel. The wanderers, in answer, united their voices, and sent
forth, in solemn modulation, the two first verses of the seventy-sixth
Psalm, according to the metrical version of the Scottish Kirk:

"In Judah's land God is well known,
His name's in Israel great:
In Salem is his tabernacle,
In Zion is his seat.
There arrows of the bow he brake,
The shield, the sword, the war.
More glorious thou than hills of prey,
More excellent art far."

A shout, or rather a solemn acclamation, attended the close of the
stanza; and after a dead pause, the second verse was resumed by the
insurgents, who applied the destruction of the Assyrians as prophetical
of the issue of their own impending contest:--

"Those that were stout of heart are spoil'd,
They slept their sleep outright;
And none of those their hands did find,
That were the men of might.

When thy rebuke, O Jacob's God,
Had forth against them past,
Their horses and their chariots both
Were in a deep sleep cast."

There was another acclamation, which was followed by the most profound
silence.

While these solemn sounds, accented by a thousand voices, were prolonged
amongst the waste hills, Claverhouse looked with great attention on the
ground, and on the order of battle which the wanderers had adopted, and
in which they determined to await the assault.

"The churls," he said, "must have some old soldiers with them; it was no
rustic that made choice of that ground."

"Burley is said to be with them for certain," answered Lord Evandale,
"and also Hackston of Rathillet, Paton of Meadowhead, Cleland, and some
other men of military skill."

"I judged as much," said Claverhouse, "from the style in which these
detached horsemen leapt their horses over the ditch, as they returned to
their p