"I am going to seek for Captain Hunter," replied Smeaton. "He is a man of activity, resource, and shrewdness, and will, I doubt not, lend me a few of his marksmen, if he can spare them, to occupy those houses down below, so as both to keep them for ourselves, and to gall the enemy in their advance up the street. Where do you think I shall find him?"
"He is up with Miller and Douglas on the Liverpool road," answered Lord Derwentwater. "Add my request to your own; the idea is a very good one." And, while Smeaton remounted his horse and hurried away, the other nobleman continued to animate the men, not only by his own personal exertions, but by distributing amongst them all the money he had about him.
In ten minutes, Smeaton returned with a body of some fifty men and Captain Hunter, the borderer, whose moss-trooping propensities and experience had rendered him a very serviceable man of action in any great emergency. Passing the barricade, without speaking to any one, they hurried on down the street till they reached the first turning out of it, where, dividing into two bodies, the one dispersed through the neighbouring houses on either hand, taking post at the windows, while the other body, consisting of about twenty men, advanced some way down the narrow lanes, which led out into the fields near the entrance of the high road to Wigan.
In the meantime, Brigadier Macintosh had remained watching the operation with his arms crossed on his chest; but the moment he saw the men enter the mouth of the lane, he despatched a messenger after them, to order them instantly back. They returned unwillingly, with Hunter at their head; but those in the houses were suffered to remain, and did good service throughout the day.
At some period during the morning, and before the attack actually commenced, Captain Innes, with a body of about fifty Highlanders, was thrown into the tall house belonging to Sir Henry Haughton which the young Earl of Eskdale had pointed out; but they were recalled almost immediately, and the house left to its fate. In the confusion and hurry of that fatal day, it was not known who gave the order for their advance, or that for their recall.
The cannon of which the insurgents had possessed themselves was divided amongst the different barricades; but the difficulty was to find gunners; for only one man in the whole army even pretended ever to have fired a cannon in his life; and he, by the time the guns were planted, had imbibed a sufficient quantity of brandy to render the accuracy of his aim rather doubtful. A small powder-magazine was established near the centre of the town, and a lame man, incapable of any great exertion on foot, but zealous, active, and determined, was appointed to carry supplies on horseback to the several barricades.
As soon as all the arrangements were completed, and the foot-soldiers stationed behind the hasty works which had been constructed, the gentlemen volunteers, as they were called, retired to the churchyard, with their horses at hand, ready to sally out upon the enemy whenever a favourable occasion occurred. General Forster established his head-quarters at the Mitre Inn, with his horses at the door, ready to carry him wherever his presence might be needed, and it is now admitted on all hands that he showed no lack of courage or activity during the day.
When all was ready, a sort of solemn pause succeeded to the bustle; the noise and confusion died away in the town, and the occasional subdued talking of people in knots, with, from time to time, a loud-spoken word of command, or a call from one officer to another at a distance, were the only sounds that arose in the streets of Preston. From the fields and lanes beyond, however, came the beat of the drum and the blast of the trumpet, nearer, nearer, nearer yet; first in one spot, then from two or three different points around, showing that the forces of King George had reached the outskirts of the city, and were spreading themselves round it preparatory to a general attack. In silent and awful expectation the insurgents awaited the appearance of the heads of the enemy's columns. Sternly and steadfastly they gazed over the barricades, and no sign of fear or wavering was visible; yet it was a terrible situation, to be thus waiting inactive for the commencement of a struggle which all well knew was for life or death.
At length, some boys, and a woman with a child in her arms, came running up into the main street out of the lane in which Smeaton had posted the party of Hunter's troop, afterwards withdrawn, and fled at full speed towards Macintosh's barricade. They were suffered to pass, and entered, exclaiming breathlessly--
"They are coming up the lane, they are coming up the lane!"