For his cousin Will it was indeed who stood before him, clad in the worn and smoke-begrimed uniform of the Regiment of the Covenant.
"Wat, Wat, how came you here, lad?" cried Will Gordon.
A gleam of his ancient wilfulness beaconed a moment in Wat's eye.
"Why—over the wall there," he said. "I was in somewhat of a hurry and I had not time to go round by the gate and tirl at the pin."
And with that something buzzed drowsily in his ears like a prisoned blue-bottle, and he fainted again.
Lucky it was for Wat Gordon that Sir Robert Hamilton did not command the regiment, and that the dead Cleland had instilled his humane principles into those under him. For the officers merely ordered their prisoner to be carried along with their own wounded to a convenient house in the town, and there to be warded till he should be well enough to be remitted to Edinburgh.
To this hospital Will Gordon came to see him often, and give him what heartening he might; but it was not till the seventh day, when Wat showed some promise of early recovery, that Will, with a mighty serious face, showed him a trinket in the palm of his hand.
"Ken ye that?" he asked.
"'Tis Kate's token that she was to send me if she needed me. Where got ye it, Will?"
And even as he spoke these words Wat was half out of bed in his eagerness; but Will took him in his arms with gentle firmness and pressed him back upon the pillow.