His brother-in-law, Sir David Lindsay, and John and Walter Saintclaires, ever the tried friends of the Douglas, and a few others who had been fighting along with him before he thus plunged from their sight into the midst of his foes, took advantage of the terror which his onset had occasioned, and followed bravely in his course, until accident led them to fall in with the stream of victorious Scots who were pouring onwards under the triumphant Hepbornes. Recognizing each other, and joining together with loud cheers they swept away all that ventured to oppose them. They had cleared the plain ground of the enemy for several bowshots before them; the English battalions had been thinned and dispersed over the ground, and the Scottish troops were urging after them without order, when Sir Patrick Hepborne the younger, with Lindsay and the Saintclaires, who were pushing forward together, saw before them the brave and good Richard Lundie, sorely wounded, yet boldly bestriding the body of a warrior, and dealing death with a battle-axe to every Englishman who ventured to approach within his circle. Those who still contended with him quickly fled at their approach, and then, to their great grief, they discovered that it was the noble Douglas that lay weltering in his blood. He had not fallen alone, for his faithful esquires, Simon Glendinning and Robert Hart, lay near him both covered with mortal wounds, and already lifeless, surrounded by heaps of the slaughtered foe. His gallant natural son, too, the handsome Archibald Douglas, faithful to the trust reposed in him, though severely wounded, and bleeding helplessly on the grass, still held his banner with the grasp of death.
“How fares it with thee, Lord Douglas?” cried Sir John Saintclaire, overwhelmed with grief at the sad spectacle before him, and hastening to assist the others in raising him up.
“Well, right well, I trow, my good friends,” replied Douglas feebly, “seeing that I die thus, like all my ancestors, in the field of fame. But let not the death of Douglas be known, for ‘a dead man shall yet gain a glorious field.’ Hide me, then, I pray thee, in yonder brake; let some one rear my standard, the jamais arriere of the Douglas, and let my war-cry be set up, and I promise that ye shall well revenge my death.” [[453]]
By this time the English, who had been driven for several bowshots beyond that part of the field where the Earl of Douglas had fallen, were now rallying under the heroic efforts of the Hotspur, who, aided by his brother, was again cheering them on to the charge. The Scottish troops began again to give ground before their superior force, and were already retreating in numbers past the group who were occupied about the dying hero. They saw the immediate necessity of conveying him away while the ground was yet clear of the enemy, and Lundie, Lindsay, and the two Saintclaires hastened to obey his injunctions. He uttered not a word of complaint to tell of the agonizing tortures he felt whilst they were removing him. They laid him on a mossy bank among the long ferns, in the closest part of the thicket. Then he took their hands in succession, squeezing them with affection, and when he had thus taken leave of Lindsay and the two Saintclaires—
“Go,” said he faintly to them, “ye have done all for the Douglas that humanity or friendship might require of ye; go, for Scotland lacketh the aid of your arms. Leave me with Lundie; ’tis meeter for his hand to close the eyes of his dying lord.”
The brave knights looked their last upon him, covered their eyes and stole silently away from a scene that entirely unmanned them. Lundie took out a silver crucifix, and, bending over the Douglas, held it up under a stream of moonlight that broke downwards through an opening in the thick foliage above them.
“I see it, Lundie,” said Douglas; “I see the image of my blessed Redeemer. My sins have been many, but thou art already possessed of them all. My soul doth fix herself on Him, in sincere repentance, and in the strong hope of mercy through His merits.”
The affectionate Lundie knelt by the Earl’s side, and whilst his own wounds bled copiously, his tears were dropping fast on his dying master.
“I know thine inmost heart, Lord Douglas,” said he in a voice oppressed by his grief; “thy hopes of Heaven may indeed be strong. Hast thou aught of worldly import to command me?”
“Margaret,” said Douglas in a voice scarcely audible, “my dearest Margaret! Tell Moray to forget not our last private converse; and do thou—do thou tell my wife that my last thought, my last word was—Margaret!”