Again silence. The lawyer found that he must go through with it, having come so far. "It seems that there is a cripple fellow of the neighborhood who had stumbled, unseen, upon your trysts. He told—spoke it all out to the crowd gathered. There was a letter, too, upon her which gave a clue. But she never named you and evidently meant not to name you.... Poor child! She may have thought herself strong, and then things have come over her wave on wave. Her grandfather—that dark upbringing on tenets harsh and wrathful—certainty of disgrace. Pitiful!"
There came a sound from the chair pushed back from the light. Mr. Wotherspoon measured the table with his fingers.
"It seems that the countryside was searching for her. It was the laird of Glenfernie who, alone and coming upon some trace, entered the Kelpie's Pool and found her there. They say that he carried her, dead, in his arms through the glen to White Farm."
Some proclamation or other was being made at the Cross of Edinburgh. A trumpet blew and the street was filled with footsteps.
"The laird of Glenfernie," said the lawyer, "has joined, I hear, Sir John Cope at Dunbar. It is not impossible that you may have speech together from opposing battle-lines." He poured wine. "My bag of news is empty, Captain Rullock."
Ian rose from his seat. His face was gray and twisted, his voice, when he spoke, hollow, low, and dry. "I must go now to Lord George Murray.... It was all news, Mr. Wotherspoon. I—What are words, anyhow? Give you good day, sir!"
Mr. Wotherspoon, standing in his door, watched him down the stair and forth from the house. "He goes brawly! How much is night, and how much streak of dawn?"
Sir John Cope, King George's general in Scotland, had but a small army. It was necessary in the highest degree that Prince Charles Edward should meet and defeat this force before it was enlarged, before from England came more and more regular troops.... A battle won meant prestige gained, the coming over of doubting thousands, an echo into England that would bring the definite accession of great Tory names. Cope and his twenty-five hundred men, regulars and volunteers, approaching Edinburgh from the east, took position near the village of Prestonpans. On the morning of the 20th of September out moved to meet him the Prince and Lord George Murray, behind them less than two thousand men.
By afternoon the two forces confronted each the other; but Cope had chosen well, the right position. The sea guarded one flank, a deep and wide field ditch full of water the other. In his rear were stone walls, and before him a wide marsh. The Jacobite strength halted, reconnoitered, must perforce at last come to a standstill before Cope's natural fortress. There was little artillery, no great number of horse. Even the bravest of the brave, Highland or Lowland, might draw back from the thought of trying to cross that marsh, of meeting the moat-like ditch under Cope's musket-fire. Sunset came amid perturbation, a sense of check, impending disaster.