ed with
his blood, open upon his breast. Then we happed him up, and I, who could
at that time fight but little, put up a short prayer over him--though
not, of course, like a minister, or one bred to the trade. And I thought
as I rode away that it was better to leave him the sword, than that
Sandy should get it to prate about at his general meetings. Even as it
was he could not let him be, but in the after days of quiet he must have
him up to coffin him, and bury in the kirkyard of Glassford. Yet to do
Sandy justice, he had the grace to leave him the sword in his hand.

Now my father had not fallen on the battlefield itself, but rather when
hastening thither, for indeed he never saw the bridge, nor had hand in
the guiding of the host, whose blood Robert Hamilton poured out as one
that pours good wine upon the ground.

Yet because we were so near, we risked the matter and rode over to see
the narrow passage of the Bridge where they had fought it so stoutly all
day long. Here and there lay dead men yet unburied; but the countrymen
were gradually putting the poor bodies in the earth. Some of them lay
singly, but more in little clusters where they set their backs
desperately to one another, and had it out with their pursuers that they
might die fighting and not running. Still the pursuit had not been
unmerciful, for there were few that had fallen beyond the long avenues
of the Palace oaks.

But when we came to the banks of the river, and looked down upon the
bridge-head we saw the very grass dyed red, where the men had been shot
down. And on the brae-sides where Hamilton had drawn them up when he
called them from the bridge-end, they had fallen in swathes like barley.
But it was not a heartsome sight, and we turned our rein and rode away,
weary and sad within.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CURATE OF DALRY.

When I returned to Earlstoun I found the house in sad disorder. Maisie
Lennox I found not, for she had ridden to the Duchrae to meet her father
and to keep the house, which had had some unwonted immunity lately
because of the friendship of the McGhies of Balmaghie. For old Roger
McGhie was a King's man and in good favour, though he never went far
from home. But only patrolled his properties, lundering such Whigs as
came his way with a great staff, but tenderly withal and mostly for
show. His daughter Kate, going the way of most women folk, was the
bitterest Whig and most determined hearer of the field-preachers in th