In the course of the night, shortly after the third watch had been set, some of those who had tarried by the way came to the camp with the tidings that Dalziel and all the royal forces in Glasgow were coming upon us. This, though foreseen, caused a great panic, and a council of war, consisting, as usual, of ministers and officers, was held, to determine what should be done; but it was likewise, as usual, only a fruitless controversy. I, however, on this occasion, feeling myself sustained in spirit by the assurances I had received in my meditations on the rock, ventured to speak my mind freely; which was to the effect that, taking our dejected condition, the desertion of our friends, and our disappointments from the city, into consideration, we could do no better thing than evade the swords of our adversaries by disbanding ourselves, that each might be free to seek safety for himself.

Many were inclined to this counsel; and I doubt not it would have been followed; but, while conferring together, an officer came from the privy-council to propose a cessation of arms till our demands could be considered. It was manifest that this was a wily stratagem to keep us in the snare till Dalziel had time to come up, and I did all in my power to make the council see it in the same light; but there was a blindness of mind among us, and the greater number thought it augured a speedy redress of the wrongs for which we had come to seek reparation. Nor did their obstinacy in this relax till next morning, when, instead of anything like their improbable hopes, came a proclamation ordering us to disperse, and containing neither promise of indemnity nor of pardon. But then it was too late. Dalziel was in sight. His army was coming like a stream along the foot of the Pentland-hills,—we saw his banners and the glittering of his arms, and the sound of his musicants came swelling on the breeze.

It was plain that his purpose was to drive us in towards the town; but had we dispersed we might even then have frustrated his intent. There happened, however, besides Learmont and Wallace, to be several officers among us who had stubborn notions of military honour; and they would not permit so unsoldier-like a flight. There were also divers heated and fanatical spirits, whom, because our undertaking had been for religious ends, nothing could persuade that Providence would not interfere in some signal manner for their deliverance, yea, even to the overthrow of the enemy; and Mr Whamle, a minister, one of these, getting upon the top of the rock where I had sat the night before, began to preach of the mighty things that the Lord did for the children of Israel in the valley of Ajalon, where He not only threw down great stones from the heavens, but enabled Joshua to command the sun and moon to stand still,—which to any composed mind was melancholious to hear.

In sequence to these divisions and contrarieties which enchanted us to the spot, Dalziel, considering that we were minded to give him battle, brought on his force; and it is but due to the renown of the valour of those present to record that, notwithstanding a fearful odds, our men, having the vantage ground, so stoutly maintained their station that we repulsed him thrice.

But the victory, as I have said, was not ordained for us. In the afternoon Dalziel was reinforced by several score of mounted gentlemen from the adjacent counties, and with their horse, about sunset, our phalanx was shattered, our ranks broken,—and then we began to quit the field. The number of our slain, and of those who fell into the hands of the enemy, did not in the whole exceed two hundred men. The dead might have been greater, but for the compassion of the gentlemen, who had respect to the cause which had provoked us to arms, and who, instead of doing as Dalziel's men did, without remorse or pity, cried to the fugitives to flee, and spared many in consideration of the common wrongs.

When I saw that our host was dashed into pieces, and the fragments scattered over the fields, I fled with the flying, and gained, with about some thirty other fugitives, the brow of a steep part of the Pentland-hills, where the mounted gentlemen, even had they been inclined, could not easily follow us. There, while we halted to rest a little, we heard a shout now and then rise startling from the field of battle below; but night coming on, all was soon silent, and we sat, in the holiness of our mountain-refuge, in silent rumination till the moon, rolling slowly from behind Arthur's Seat, looked from her window in the clouds, as if to admonish us to flee farther from the scene of danger.

The Reverend Mr Witherspoon being among us, was the first to feel the gracious admonition, and, rising from the ground, he said,—

"Friends, we must not tarry here, the hunters are forth, and we are the prey they pursue. They will track us long, and the hounds are not of a nature to lose scent, especially when they have tasted, as they have done this day, the rich blood of the faithful and the true. Therefore let us depart; but where, O where shall we find a home to receive us?—Where a place of rest for our weary limbs, or a safe stone for a pillow to our aching heads? But why do I doubt? Blameless as we are, even before man, of all offence, save that of seeking leave to worship God according to our conscience, it cannot be that we shall be left without succour. No, my friends! though our bed be the damp grass and our coverlet the cloudy sky, our food the haws of the hedge, and our drink the drumly burn, we have made for our hearts the down-beds of religious faith, and have found a banquet for our spirits in the ambrosial truths of the Gospel—luxuries that neither a James Sharp nor a Charles Stuart can ever enjoy, nor all the rents and revenues, fines and forfeitures, which princes may exact and prelates yearn to partake of, can buy."

He then offered up a thanksgiving that we had been spared from the sword in the battle; after which we shook hands in silence together, and each pursued his own way.

Mr Witherspoon lingered by my side as we descended the hill, and I discerned that he was inclined to be my companion; so we continued together, stretching towards the north-west, in order to fall into the Lithgow road, being mindet to pass along the skirts of Stirlingshire, thence into Lennox, in the hope of reaching Argyle's country by the way of the ferry of Balloch. But we had owre soon a cruel cause to change the course of our flight.

In coming down towards the Amond-water, we saw a man running before us in the glimpse of the moonshine, and it was natural to conclude, from his gestures and the solitude of the place, that no one could be so far-a-field at such a time, but some poor fellow-fugitive from Rullion-green where the battle was fought; so we called to him to stop, and to fear no ill, for we were friends. Still, however he fled on, and heeded not our entreaty, which made us both marvel and resolve to overtake him. We thought it was not safe to follow long an unknown person who was so evidently afraid, and flying, as we supposed, to his home. Accordingly we hastened our speed, and I, being the nimblest reached him at a place where he was stopped by a cleft in the rocks on the river's woody brink.

"Why do you fly so fast from us?" said I; "we're frae the Pentland-hills too."

At these words he looked wildly round, and his face was as ghastly as a ghost's in the moonlight; but, distorted as he was by his fears, I discovered in him my neighbour, Nahum Chapelrig, and I spoke to him by name.

"O, Ringan Gilhaize!" said he, and he took hold of me with his right hand, while he raised his left and shook it in a fearful and frantic manner, "I am a dead man, my hours are numbered, and the sand-glass of my days is amaist a' run out. I had been saved from the sword, spared from the spear, and, flying from the field, I went to a farm-house yonder; I sought admission and shelter for a forlorn Christian man; but the edicts of the persecutors are more obeyed here than the laws of God. The farmer opened his casement, and speering if I had been at the raid of the Covenanters, which, for the sake of truth and the glory of God, I couldna deny, he shot me dead on the spot; for his bullet gaed in my breast, and is fast in my—"

He could say no more; for in that juncture he gave as it were a gurgle in the throat, and swirling round, fell down a bleeding corpse on the ground where he stood, before Mr Witherspoon had time to come up.

We both looked at poor guiltless Nahum as he lay on the grass, and, after some sorrowful communion, we lifted the body, and carrying it down aneath the bank of the river, laid stones and turfs upon it by the moonlight, that the unclean birds might not be able to molest his martyred remains. We then consulted together; and having communed concerning the manner of Nahum's death, we resolved not to trust ourselves in the power of strangers in those parts of the country, where the submission to the prelatic enormity had been followed with such woful evidence of depravity of heart. So, instead of continuing our journey to the northward, we changed our course, and, for the remainder of the night, sought our way due west, by the skirts of the moors and other untrodden ways.