“We’ve got it—­we’ve got it, Rullock!”

“What?  The plan?”

“The way through!  Here has come to the Prince the man who owns the marsh!  He knows the firm ground.  Cope does not know that it is there!  Cope thinks that it is all slough!  This man swears that he can and will take us across, one treading behind another.  It’s settled.  When sleep seems to wrap us, then we’ll move!”

That was what was done, and done so perfectly, late at night, Sir John Cope sleeping, thinking himself safe as in a castle.  File after file wound noiselessly, by the one way through the marsh, and upon the farther side, so near to Cope, formed in the darkness into battle-lines....  Ian Rullock, passing through the marsh, saw in imagination Alexander lying with eyes closed.

The small force, the Stewart hope, prepared for onslaught.  The dawn was coming, there was a smell of it in the air, far away a cock crowed.  There stood, in the universal dimness, a first and strongest line, a second and weaker, badly armed line.  The mass of this army were Highlanders, alert, strong, accustomed to dawn movements, dreamlike in the heather, along the glen-sides, in the crooked pass.  They knew the tactics of surprise.  They had claymores and targes, and the most muskets.  But the second line had inadequate provision of weapons.  Many here bore scythes fastened to staves.  As they carried these over their shoulders Ian, looking back, saw them against the palest light like Death in replica.

The two lines hung motionless, on stout ground, now within the defense to which Cope had trusted, very close to the latter’s sleeping camp.  There were sentries, but the night was dark, the marsh believed to be unpassable, the crossing carried out with stealthy skill.  But now the night was going.

In the most uncertain, the faintest light, there seemed to Cope’s watchers, looking that way, a line of bushes not noted the day before.  Officers were awakened.  A movement ran through the camp like the shiver of water under dawn wind.  The light thickened.  A trumpet rang with a startled, emphatic note.  Drums rolled. To arms!  To arms! King George’s army started up in the dawning.  Infantry hastened into ranks, cavalrymen ran to their horses.  The line of bushes moved, began to come forward with great rapidity.

The Highlanders flung themselves upon Cope’s just-forming cavalry.  With their claymores they slashed at the faces of horses.  The hurt beasts wheeled, broke for the rear.  Their fellows were wounded.  Amid a whirlwind of blows, screams, shouts, with a suddenness that appalled, disorder became general.  The Highlanders seemed to fight with a demoniac strength and ferocity and after methods of their own.  They used their claymores, their dirks, their scythes fastened upon poles, against the horses, then, springing up, put long arms about the horsemen and, regardless of sword or pistol, dragged them down.  They shouted their Gaelic slogans;