There was one citizen of Edinburgh, who, after bearing himself gallantly throughout that bloody day, on finding that he was unable to bear away, like the pious Eneis, his blind and aged father, while having a young wife and her babes to protect, stood for nearly an hour amid the flames of rapine and a hundred weapons that gleamed around him, defending with his two-handed sword the archway that led to his house. A horde of assailants, flushed with ale, wine, triumph, and ferocity, opposed him; but valiantly he faced them all, until a ball from the arquebuse of a Spaniard pierced his heart and he fell dead. This citizen was Dick Hackerston; but to this hour his name is borne by the street or wynd which he so valiantly defended.
While the English were stripping the dead and slaying the wounded on the field, the little garrison in Fawside tower fired on them briskly, from bartizan and loophole, until they were environed by a body of men-at-arms under Sir Ralf Vane, who on finding the defender was a lady, tied a handkerchief to his sword and riding forward called upon her to yield.
"Yield thou!—false kite, what make ye here?" was the scoffing reply of the fierce Dame Alison, in whom the events of the day had kindled the keenest excitement. "I hold my house of the queen of Scotland, and will yield it to no Englishman,—least of all to a popinjay squire like thee."
"I am Sir Ralf Vane, madam, a captain of demi-lances, and ere now have had a château yielded to me by a marshal of France."
"The more fool he," she replied; while Roger of Westmains, sent a bullet close to Vane's right ear.
"Surrender to thee, indeed!" he exclaimed; "thou loon and heretic tyke, I would as soon think of ploughing up the devil's croft."
A cannon was now brought up; a single shot blew the gate open; then the tower was given to the flames; and as none were allowed to come forth by the doors, and the windows were (as we may still see them) grated with iron, all within perished miserably.
"The house was set on fire," saith Master Patten complaisantly in his seventy-fourth page; "and for their good-will all were burnt or smothered within." So Lady Alison died by the same dreadful death, which, but a few days before, she had devised for the Hamiltons of Preston.
Roger of Westmains, many other old men, and the wives of all her tenants perished with her: but, as already mentioned, the spirit of this stern woman is still said to haunt the ruined tower on each anniversary of that day of cattle and disaster, the Black Saturday of 1547.