"I hae heard waur advices frae mair warlike men," said Charlie; "Ride ye on, father, an' lose nae time. Gude faith! I sal gie this ane his breakfast."
Charlie as he said this put the spurs to Corby, and rode full speed against the pursuer. The trooper set himself firm in his stirrups and assumed his defence, for he saw from the prowess of Corby that it was vain to fly. Just as Charlie's mighty sword was descending on his casque, a check that he gave his horse in the hurry of the moment made him rear on end, and Charlie's stroke coming down between his ears, clove his head almost into two halves. The horse reeled and fell; but how it fared with his rider, Charlie never knew; for before he got his horse turned, there were other three of the Halls close at hand. Charlie fled amain. He was nothing afraid of himself, for he knew Corby could outstrip them by one half of the way; but his heart bled for the poor friar, whom he saw he would either be obliged to leave, or fight for him against such odds as it would be madness to withstand. The friar had, however gained the height, and having now a long sloping descent all the way to the Thief-gate-end, he was posting on at an improved pace. Charlie had one sole hope remaining of saving the friar, and that was the gaining the above-mentioned point before they were overtaken. The warriors carried no whips in those days, depending altogether on the ample spur,—therefore Charlie, as a last resource, pulled down a large branch from a hazel tree, and attacked the hinder parts of the father's mule with such a torrent of high-sounding strokes, that the animal, perhaps more sullen than exhausted, seemed to recover new life and vigour, and fled from the assault like a deer, in the utmost terror and dismay. Little wonder was it! He heard the sound of every descending stroke coming on like the gathering tempest; and, clapping his tail close down between his hips, pricking up his long ears, and looking back first with the one eye and then with the other, he went at such a rate that Corby could do little more than keep up with him.
"My swiftness is greater than I can bear," cried the friar, pronouncing the sentence all in syllables for want of breath; "verily I shall fall among the cliffs of the rocks by the side of the highway."
His danger increased with his fears; for the mule perceiving that exertion availed not, and that there was no escaping from the fierceness of his pursuer's wrath, began to throw up his heels violently at every stroke, nevertheless continuing to exert himself between these evolutions. The friar's riding-gear began to get into disorder, and with great difficulty he retained his seat; therefore he cried out with a loud voice, "I pray of thee, my son, to desist, for it is better for me to perish by an enemy's hand than thine; seest thou not my confusion and despair—verily I shall be dashed in pieces against the stones."
The friar saw nought of Charlie's intent, else he would not have besought him so earnestly to desist. The Thief-gate-end was now hard at hand. It is still well known as a long narrow path alongst the verge of a precipice, and all the bank above it was then a thicket of brushwood and gorse, so close that the wild beast of the desart could not pass through it. It was, moreover, shagged with rocks, and bedded with small stones, and the path itself was so narrow, that two horsemen could scarcely ride abreast. By such a strenuous manœuvre on the parts of Charlie and the mule, the two flyers got into this path, without having lost any ground of their pursuers. When Charlie saw this, he began to breathe more freely, and, flinging away his hazel branch, he again seized his mighty weapon in his right hand.
"Let the chields come as close on us now, an they dare," said he.
The mule still continued to eye him with a great deal of jealousy, and perceiving the brandish that he gave his long sword when he said this, he set off again full speed; so that it was a good while before the friar got time to reply. As soon as he got leisure to speak, he opened his mouth and said,—"My son, wilt thou lift up thine arm against a multitude? or canst thou contend with the torrent of the mighty waters?"
"Well, well, they may perhaps lead that winna drive," said Charlie; and he went by the friar at a light gallop, leaving him behind, who prayed to the other not to leave him nor forsake him; but it was a device of Yardbire's, and a well conceived one. He saw that as long as he kept the rear guard, and rode behind the friar, the men that pursued them would not separate on that long narrow path; therefore he vanished among the bushes, keeping, however, always within hearing of the mule's feet. Accordingly, at the first turn of the road, the foremost of the English troopers, seeing the jolly bedesman posting away by himself, put the spurs to his steed, and made a furious dash at him. The friar cried out with a loud voice; and, seeing that he would be overtaken, he turned round and drew his sword to stand on the defensive; and actually not only bore the first charge of his opponent with considerable firmness, but had "very nigh smitten him between the joints of the harness," as he termed it. It happened, moreover, very singularly, from the perversity of the mule, that in the charge the combatants changed sides, at the imminent peril of the Englishman; for the mule brushed by his horse with such violence, and leaned so sore to the one side, that both the horse and his rider were within an inch of the verge of the precipice.
The friar had no sooner made his way by, than he saw another rider coming like lightning to meet him in the face; but at the same time he heard the voice of Charlie Scott behind him, and the rending crash of his weapon. This cheered the drooping spirits of the brave friar, who had been on the very point of crying for quarter. "They beset me before and behind," cried he, "yet shall my hand be avenged. Come on, thou froward and perverse one." So saying he assumed his guard, and met his foe face to face, seeing he had no alternative. The Englishman drew a stroke, but got not time to lay it on; for just as the mule and his tall horse met, the former, in the bitterness of his ire, rushed between his opponent and the upper bank, and pressed against his fore counters with such energy, that he made the leg next him to slacken, and the horse reared from the other. The intention of the irritated mule was to crush his master's leg, or, if possible, to rub him from off his back; and therefore, in spite of the rein he closed with the Englishman's tall steed in a moment, and almost as swift as lightning. The English moss-trooper had raised his arm to strike, but seeing his horse shoved and rearing in that perilous place, he seized the rein with his sword hand. The mule finding the substance to which he leaned give way, pressed to it the harder. It was all one to him whether it had been a tree, a horse, or a rock; he shouldered against it with his side foremost so strenuously, that in spite of all the trooper could do, the fore feet of his horse on rearing, alighted within the verge of the precipice. The noble animal made a spring from his hinder legs, in order to leap by the obstreperous mongrel; but the latter still coming the closer, instead of springing by he leaped into the open void, aiming at the branches of an oak that grew in a horizontal direction from the cliff. It was an old and stubborn tree, the child of a thousand years; and when the horse and his rider fell upon its hoary branches, it yielded far to the weight. But its roots being entwined in the rifted rock as far as the stomach of the mountain, it sprung upward again with a prodigious force to regain its primitive position, and tossed the intruding weight afar into the unfathomed deep. Horse and rider went down in a rolling motion till they lessened to the eye, and fell on the rocks and water below with such a shock, that the clash sounded among the echoes of the linn like the first burst of the artillery of heaven, or the roar of an earthquake from the depths of the earth.