"Wherefore, then, stand ye there in arms against his forces?" came the answer back. "Yield, and ye shall have quarter and fair conduct to Edinburgh!"
The man spake none so evilly for a persecutor, and in my heart I liked him.
"I thank you, Captain Bruce, for your fair speech," said Cameron, "but I wot well you mean fair passage to the Grassmarket. The King we own is not King Charles Stuart, and it liketh us to go to our King's court through the crash of battle, rather than through the hank of the hangman's twine."
"This preacher is no man of straw—fight he will," I heard them say one to the other, for they were near to us, even at the foot of the opposite knoll.
Then our horsemen, of whom I was one, closed in order without further word, and our foot drew out over the moss in readiness to fire. David Hackstoun was with us on the left, and Captain Fowler on the right. But Richard Cameron was always a little ahead of us all, with his brother Michael with him on one side, and I, riding my Galloway nag, close upon his right flank—which was an honourable post for one so young as I, and served withal to keep my spirits up.
Just before he gave the word to charge, he cried out to us, pointing to the enemy with his sword:
"Yonder is the way to the good soldier's crown!"
The day had been clouding over, the heat growing almost intolerable. It was now about two in the afternoon. It was easy to see, had we had the eyes to observe it, that a thunderstorm was brewing, and even as Richard Cameron stretched out his sword over his horse's head, and cried on to us to charge in the name of the Lord, the first levin-bolt shot down, glittering into the moor like a forked silver arrow. And over our head the whole firmament raired and crashed.
"The Captain of our Salvation calls for us!" cried Cameron. "Who follows after, when the Son of God rides forth to war!"
So with that we lowered our sword-points and drave at them. I think I must have ridden with my eyes shut, down that little green knowe with the short grass underfoot. I know that, even as we rode, the thunder began to roar about us, girding us in a continuous ring of lightning-flashes.