"Say nae mair, honest woman," says Will, perfectly undismayed, "an the child be yours you're perfectly welcome to him. It was to save his bit innocent life that I brought him away, and no for ony greed o' other folks bairns. I kendna wha was aught him, but sin he be yours I'll deliver him safe into your hands. Take care an' no let him get cauld, for the morning air is no gude for a bairn."
So saying, Will howked the boy out o' the mids o' a great heap o' claes, rowed him up as weel as he could, and then said, after two or three sobs, "I like ill to part wi' him, but a mother's aye a mother." Then he kissed him, and added, "Fare-ye weel, my wee man! You and I will may-be never meet again; but, whether or no, you will be nae the waur o' a trooper's blessing. An ye be spared ye'll be a man when auld Will Laidlaw's head is laid i' the grave. Hae, honest woman, there's your son, and God bless you baith!"
She bent her body over him in the most affectionate way, and stretched her arms as if to embrace him, but she neither touched him nor any part of Laidlaw's claes. The boy had awakened, and when Will held him out to give him up to his mother, he cried out, "No-no-no-no. No go ty'e, no go t'ye. Daddy's boy feared, daddy's boy feared."
"Gude faith, sae ye may, my man! thinks I to mysel, "an ye kend about a' this as weel as I do!"
I saw naething that was passing, for I was lying close on my face, and hinging by the heather; but I heard a that was said, and Will tauld me the rest afterwards. He said, she made the sign of the cross above her child's breast, then over his own head, as he stooped forward with him in his arms. Then she glided aside, and made the cross over my head and shoulders, and it was heaven's grace that I didna ken, else I wad hae swarfed away. Last of all, she again bent herself over her child, and stretched out her arms on each side of him; then, leaning herself back on the air, she arose gently from the ground, and sailed away through the dim shades of the morning toward the verge of the heaven.
I wondered what was asteer then, for I heard Will crying on the Virgin Mary to preserve him, and rhaming o'er the names o' a' the saints he had ever heard of; and at length he gae a great gluther, like a man drowning, and fell down wi' sic a dunt he gart a' the moss shake again. The bairn screamed and grat; and I didna ken what to do, for I durstna look up for fear o' seeing the ghost; till at length I heard that the rest of the sentinels had caught the alarm, and were passing the watch-word frae ane to another, and then I ventured to set up my head. But, gude and gracious, sic a grip as I did haud by the heather!
I took up the child, covered him with my cloak, and soothed him; and the poor little harassed thing hid his face in my bosom. Will lay quivering and struggling like ane in a dream, or under the influence of the night-mare; and, after I had rolled him three times over, he awoke in the most horrid consternation. "Charlie, where are ye? Speak to me, Charlie, and tell me where I am." Then a whole string o' saints and angels were a' invoked, one after another, ower and ower again. "Mercy on us, Charlie! I hae had sic a dream as never mortal man had; and a' sae plain and sae particular, I could amaist swear it was real. What do ye think, Charlie? Didna this bairn's mother come to me in my sleep? and she says to me, 'That bairn's mine.'—Na, that wasna what she said first. 'Ye dinna ken me,' says she." And then Will began and told me all that I had heard pass between them before, and all that I had seen, and some part that I had not seen; but a' that I could do, I couldna persuade him that it wasna a dream. And it was better it was sae; for if he had kend and believed that he had conversed with a spirit, it wad hae put him daft. It pat me clean out o' my judgment; and for that day, and mony a day and night after, I kend nae mair what I was doing than ane dreaming, and remembered nae mair what I had been doing than if I had been asleep all the time. I can therefore gie but a puir and a lame account o' what followed, for it is maistly from hearsay, although I was tauld that I bure a principal hand in the fray.
We started at the scraigh o' day, and drove on. There were always four or five light horsemen, well mounted, who rode before our array to see if the coast was clear; and as we went round the head of the Gowan Burn, about mid-day, ane o' these came galloping back, and told us that the English were awaiting us at the fords of Keilder, with an army of a thousand horse.
"Aha!" quo' Habby Elliot! "I thought we warna to get hame this way. We hae just twa choices, callants, either to fight or flee."