nearly four miles they chased him,
but ran him down at length. After some hard giving and taking, he had to
acknowledge his defeat, and, pinioned like a common malefactor--arms
tied behind him, legs bound under his horse's belly--they rode with him
into Carlisle town.

The news of the treacherous taking of his follower was not long in
reaching Buccleuch, who at once raised an angry protest. Scrope, the
English Warden, received this with an evasive and obviously trumped-up
counter-charge of Kinmont Will having first broken truce. Moreover, he
said, he was a notorious enemy to law and order, and must bear the
penalty of his misdeeds. This was more than the bold Buccleuch could
stomach.

"He has ta'en the table wi' his hand,
He garr'd the red wine spring on hie--
'Now Christ's curse on my head,' he said,
'But avenged of Lord Scrope I'll be!
O, is my basnet a widow's curch?
Or my lance a wand o' the willow-tree?
Or my arm a ladye's lilye hand,
That an English lord should lightly me?'"

No time was lost in making an appeal to King James, which resulted in an
application to the English Government. But while the English authorities
quibbled, paltered, and delayed--with a little evasion, a little extra
red-tapism, a little judicious procrastination--the days of Kinmont
Willie were being numbered by his captors. The triumph of putting an end
to the daring deeds of so bold a Scottish reiver when they had him
safely in chains in Carlisle Castle, was one that they were not likely
lightly to forego. It would be indeed a merry crowd of English Borderers
that flocked to Haribee Hill on the day that Will of Kinmont dangled
from the gallows.

Buccleuch saw that he had no time to lose. He himself must strike at
once, and strike with all his might.

The night of April 13, 1596, was dark and stormy. All the Border burns
and rivers were in spate; the winds blew shrewd and chill through the
glens of Liddesdale, and sleet drifted down in the teeth of the gale.
The trees that grew so thick round Woodhouselee bent and cracked, and
sent extra drenching showers of rain down on the steel jacks of a band
of horsemen who carefully picked their way underneath them, on to the
south. Buccleuch was leader, and with him rode some forty picked men of
his friends and kinsmen, to meet some hundred and fifty or so of other
chosen men. Scotts, Elliots, Armstrongs, and Grahams were there, and
although Buccleuch