"Traitor!" cried his destroyer furiously; "you die by the hand of Sir Walter Fenton, Knight Banneret of Scotland!"
"So falls Hugh Mackay, of Scoury!" moaned the other as he sank backward and expired.
"Scoury!" reiterated Walter; "hah! then this hour avenges Dundee the slaughter of Killycrankie and of Cromdale."
At that moment he was hurled to the earth by a wounded charger as it rushed madly from the conflict. He fell against a tree and lay stunned and insensible to all that passed around him.
The sun was setting, and still the doubtful battle continued to be waged with undiminished ardour, until Mareschal Boufflers, at the head of a powerful body of cavalry, the French and Scottish gendarmerie, and the royal regiment, De Rousillon, swept like a torrent over the corpse-strewn plains with the oriflamme, displayed and decided the fortune of the war just as the sun's broad disc dipped behind the far horizon. William, instead of restoring his tarnished honour, was compelled to retreat in renewed disgrace, leaving many officers of valour and distinction and 3,000 soldiers slain; while the French, though they had to regret the fall of an equal number, with the Prince de Turenne, the Marquis de Bellefonde, Tilladete, Fernaçon, and many other chevaliers of noble blood, remained masters of the field, over which they suspended from a lofty gibbet King William's luckless confidant, the spy and intriguer Millevoix.
Paris resounded with joy and acclamation on tidings of this great victory arriving; the princes and soldiers who had served there were idolized as superior beings by the ladies and women of every rank, whose transports amounted to a species of frenzy, and from that hour for many a year every ornament and piece of dress was known by the name of Steinkirke.
CHAPTER XVII.
A DISCLOSURE.
'Tis night;—and glittering o'er the trampled heath,
Pale gleams the moonlight on the field of death;
Lights up each well-known spot, where late in blood,
The vanquished yielded, and the victor stood;
When red in clouds the sun of battle rode,
And poured on Britain's front its favoring flood.
LORD GRENVILLE.
Again the summer moon rose brightly over the secluded village of Steinkirke, and poured its cold and steady lustre on cornfields drenched in blood, and trod to gory mire by the charge of the spurred squadrons, the closer movements of the compact squares of infantry, or the artillery's track; on the pale and upturned faces of the dying, the distorted and ghastlier lineaments of the dead,—on a wide battle-field strewn with all the trophies of war and destruction,—misery and agony.