"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 the first houses in the village. Oh! my brave lords," cried she, clapping her hands. "Victory! victory!"
But she stopped suddenly on perceiving a body of the enemy's army advancing to charge the victors in flank.
"It is nothing, it is nothing," said Douglas; "so long as there is only cavalry we have nothing much to fear, and besides the Earl of Argyll will fall in in time to aid them."
"George," said Little William.
"Well?" asked Douglas.
"Don't you see?" the child went on, stretching out his arms towards the enemy's force, which was coming on at a gallop.
"What?"
"Each horseman carries a footman armed with an arquebuse behind him, so that the troop is twice as numerous as it appears."