"It is the day of the Lord's anger," he said, "and it is expedient that
some men should die for the people!"

We told him that we were ready, and that from the beginning we had
counted on nothing else. But within me I felt desperately ill-prepared:
yet, for the sake of the banner I carried, I tholed and said nothing.

It was about ten of the day, and because we heard not from our folk who
had been posted to give warning, we sent out other two to find them.
Then having taken a meal of meat for the better sustaining of our
bodies, we lay down to sleep for an hour on a pleasant green place,
which is all surrounded by morasses, for we had gotten no rest the night
before.

Now I think we were all fey at this time, for we laid us down on the
edge of the moss in a place that is open to all. And this when we might
have withdrawn ourselves deep into the bog, and so darned ourselves
among the "quakking quas"--dangerous and impassable flowes, so that no
dragoons in the world could have come at us. But this we did not, for
the word and doom were written. It was our enemies' day. As Cameron said
that morning as we passed the house of William Mitchell in Meadowhead,
and when they brought him out a basin and water to wash his hands, also
a towel wherewith to dry them:

"This is their last washing. My head and hands are now cleansed for the
offering!"

So we laid us down among a great swirling of whaups and crying of
peesweeps. For the season of their nesting was hardly over, and all the
moorland was astir with their plaintive notes.

After a long time I awoke, dreaming that Maisie Lennox stood by my
bedside and took my hand, saying, "The kye are in the corn!" I sat up,
and, lo, there within half a mile, and beating the moor in search of us,
were two companies of dragoons, of the number of about one hundred and
twenty, as near as at a glance I could reckon. My heart gave a stound,
and I said to myself, "This is surely thy death-day, William Gordon!"
And the word sounded strangely in my heart, for I had begun to think my
life worth living in these latter days, and was none so keen upon the
dying as were some others of our company.

But on the instant I awakened Cameron and his brother Michael, and also
David Hackstoun of Rathillet, that was a soldier most stern, but yet a
just man according to his lights. And they sat up and saw the soldiers
sweeping the moor. But, as I say, we were all fey. For even then it was
within our pow