Urged by this blasphemous application of Scripture, burning brands were heaped by the people against the door, and soon the increased yells of satisfaction announced to the miserable advocate that the barrier was rapidly giving way, and that in another moment the reeking hands of the destroyers would be upon him. He threw round a glance of agony, the barred windows denied all hope of escape, and now his stern soul sank at the prospect of a cruel and immediate death, when lo! one tremendous yell of another import brought him once more to the shattered windows. "It is a dream!" he exclaimed.
A troop of the Royal Life Guards, with their bright arms flashing in the light of the waving torches, were hewing and treading down the mob like a field of rye; and chief above all shone one cavalier—it was Dundee—the gallant, the terrible Claver'se, that man-fiend, whom all deemed six hundred miles away. There was no mistaking the splendour of his armour, the nobility of his air, the ferocity of his purpose.
"Close up—fall on, gentlemen; no quarter to the knaves!" he exclaimed, while, standing erect in his stirrups, he showered his blows on every side, his white plumes rising and falling in unison with his trenchant rapier.
"Hey for King James! Ho for the cavaliers! Down with the rebels—down with the whigamores!" cried Holsterlee and others, as they pressed forward, and the rabble grovelled in the dust beneath the tremendous rush of the heavy horses, and their riders in steel and buff. In a minute the narrow alley was cleared of the living, and piled knee-deep with dead and dying. The shrill voice of Ichabod, as he was borne off by his disciples, was heard dying away in the distance, like that of an evil spirit carried away by a stormy wind.
By something like a miracle, Lord Dundee had traversed the whole of hostile England, and though menaced on every hand by great bodies of troops, had reached his native capital in safety; bringing with him not only the sixty cavalier troopers (who of all his cavalry alone remained staunch to him), but with them Walter Fenton, Lord Dunbarton, Finland, and other officers retaken from De Ginckel. They now rode under his orders as gentlemen-troopers, mounted on heavy black chargers that had whilome belonged to the Swart Ruyters; and the whole, with standards displayed, had entered the city about an hour before the assault on Rosehaugh's house.
The Rev. Dr. Joram, late chaplain to the Royal Scots, also bestrode a horse which he had taken as his spoil in battle; and had donned a trooper's corslet, with which his clerical bob-periwig consorted as oddly as with the fierce and tipsy expression of his flushed and florid face, and with the stern cock of the Monmouth beaver that surmounted it. The gallant divine had recently imbibed so much wine that he could scarcely keep his saddle.
Of the fate of their captured comrades they as yet knew nothing; but Gavin of that Ilk, with twenty other officers and five hundred men, were then at London, close prisoners; the rest had returned to their colours; and after a time, the whole, seeing the futility of resistance, ultimately embarked peaceably under the orders of their new commander, the veteran Duke de Schomberg. None were punished, "as the new government had not yet been fully recognized in Scotland."
Rosehaugh had been saved from a terrible immolation; but the services of the night were not yet over. Claverhouse, with his cavaliers, retired to a quiet part of the city, under protection of the castle batteries, where a brave garrison of Catholic soldiers, led by the Duke of Gordon, remained yet staunch to James.
"My lord Earl," said Dundee to Dunbarton, "we must be somewhat economical of our persons and horses, when encountering these mad burghers and drunken saints, and not forget that we are the last hope of the King in this hotbed of Presbytery and rebellion."
"True," replied the Earl, "and I rejoice that we have but few to regret, and few to mourn for us if we perish in the struggle on which we are about to plunge."