ming it."

"It is I who received the order to seize it; I will seize it!" cried
Seyton.

"Perhaps," returned Lord Arbroath, "but not before me!"

"Before you and before every Hamilton in the world!" exclaimed Seyton,
putting his horse to the gallop and rushing down into the hollow road--

"Saint Bennet! and forward!"

"Come, my faithful kinsmen!" cried Lord Arbroath, dashing forward on his
side with the same object; "come, my men-at-arms! For God and the queen!"

The two troops precipitated themselves immediately in disorder and ran
against one another in the narrow way, where, as we have said, two men
could hardly pass abreast. There was a terrible collision there, and the
conflict began among friends who should have been united against the
enemy. Finally, the two troops, leaving behind them some corpses stifled
in the press, or even killed by their companions, passed through the
defile pell-mell and were lost sight of in the ravine. But during this
struggle Seyton and Arbroath had lost precious time, and the detachment
sent by Murray, which had taken the road by Glasgow, had reached the
village beforehand; it was now necessary not to take it, but to retake
it.

Argyll saw that the whole day's struggle would be concentrated there,
and, understanding more and more the importance of the village,
immediately put himself at the head of the body of his army, commanding a
rearguard of two thousand men to remain there and await further orders to
take part in the fighting. But whether the captain who commanded them
had ill understood, or whether he was eager to distinguish himself in the
eyes of the queen, scarcely had Argyll vanished into the ravine, at the
end of which the struggle had already commenced between Kirkcaldy of
Grange and Morton on the one side, and on the other between Arbroath and
Seyton, than, without regarding the cries of Mary Stuart, he set off in
his turn at a gallop, leaving the queen without other guard than the
little escort of twenty men which Douglas had chosen for her. Douglas
sighed.

"Alas!" said the queen, hearing him, "I am not a soldier, but there it
seems to me is a battle very badly begun."

"What is to be done?" replied Douglas. "We are every one of us
infatuated, from first to last, and all these men are behaving to-day
like madmen or children."

"Victory! victory!" said the queen; "the enemy is retreating, fighting.
I see the banners of Seyton and Arbroath floating near t